Work to Begin on Foothill Ranch Industrial Sector

Hon Development, one of the largest landowners in Orange County, said Tuesday that it will soon begin building the first industrial buildings at its giant Foothill Ranch community.

Hon said it had picked three local developers to build the first of dozens of industrial buildings at Foothill Ranch, which is northeast of the Irvine Spectrum industrial park in Irvine and the interchange of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways. The development is in an unincorporated area of the county.

The developers are Burke Commercial Development of Irvine, a developer, real estate broker and property manager; Watt Business Properties Inc. of Irvine, an affiliate of the big Santa Monica developer Watt Enterprises, and Davis Developments of Newport Beach.

The first of 3,900 housing units planned for the community are already under construction.

The 2,743-acre Foothill Ranch is typical of a trend toward combining offices and factories with housing in big planned communities in order to provide jobs near people’s homes, curtailing traffic.

Foothill Ranch Co., the Hon affiliate developing the community, has permission from the county to build about 8 million square feet of commercial space on 600 acres under a development agreement approved by county supervisors several years ago.

Construction in the industrial area, located at the southern tip of the community, won’t be completed until the turn of the century, Hon said.

Hon and the three developers will build the first phase of the industrial buildings as a joint venture, and each will own a percentage of the buildings, most of which will be held as an investment rather than sold. Hon declined to say what percentage of ownership it would share with the developers.

In the first stage of the first phase of construction, Watt will build about 95,000 square feet of office and industrial space, mostly in one-story buildings designed to be rented to small tenants who would occupy between 1,200 and 2,000 square feet.

Burke will build about 140,000 square feet of small buildings for sale or lease in sizes from 4,000 to 10,000 square feet.

Davis will build buildings as large as 40,000 square feet for industrial users, for a total of about 160,000 square feet. The three developers together will build a total of 400,000 square feet. Construction is scheduled to begin in June.

These buildings will still leave a large part of the first phase’s 140 acres empty, however, and development of the whole 140 acres is expected to take as long as four years.

Hon has three major projects in Orange County now: Niguel Summit in Laguna Niguel, which includes 1,500 homes that are now nearly all built, and no commercial space; Coal Canyon--the company prefers to call it Cypress Canyon--which is beyond Anaheim Hills in the far eastern part of the county, now in the early planning stages; and Foothill Ranch, which has stirred controversy over its development agreement.