REAL ESTATE : Loral Corp. Plans to Continue Renting Ford Aerospace Site

By 1996, Loral Corp. will be paying $1-million-a-month rent for the 99-acre property where Ford Aerospace Corp.’s Newport Beach defense plant is located under a sublease with Ford.

That rent might be stiff enough to inspire Loral, a New York-based defense contractor that is buying Ford Aerospace, to move the plant. Ford has been leasing the land on a long-term lease since 1958 at what were thought to be very low rates.

Loral will start out paying $92,000 a month through mid-1995 for the site, according to the sublease.

The rent then jumps to $550,000 per month and goes up to $1 million from 1996 through 1998, when the sublease expires.

The land, which belongs to the Irvine Co., could probably be profitably developed as a residential neighborhood.

But Loral officials say the company will stay in Newport Beach for at least the eight years of the sublease.

“We’ll stay on as long as we can and look for an appropriate solution at the end of the eight years,” Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz said recently. “The people out here are going to have to solve that problem. We in New York are not going to solve that problem.”