REAL ESTATE : Rockefeller Partners Looking for Tenants Before Construction

Looks like they may have been a little optimistic. When a partnership led by former Chase Manahattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller said last year that it would start construction on a 13-story building in Anaheim by spring, 1991, some people in the Orange County real estate industry thought it might be a “preemptive strike”: a public announcement intended to deter other developers from starting construction on their own planned buildings near Anaheim Stadium.

Here it is spring, and the Rockefeller partnership says the building--part of a project called Central Park Towers--might not get under way this year. The developer is having the same problem everyone else is: These days, nobody will lend money to build an office tower unless the developer first has a goodly number of tenants signed up to move in.

The developer says it has hired Cushman Realty Corp., a Los Angeles-based broker, to find tenants for its first project in Southern California. Meanwhile, the first of two office towers in the Rockefeller project is making its way through the red tape at Anaheim City Hall. No major problems are expected there, city planners say, and the project should have jumped all the hurdles fairly soon.

“Things can happen rather quickly in this business,” said Bill Hatch, president of Rockefeller & Associates Realty in San Francisco, “but it may not happen this year because it would take us six months to commence construction anyway.”