Fullerton Seniors Project Is Finding Takers

A growing number of senior citizens are forking over $95,000 to $300,000 in cash and paying monthly fees of $1,100 to $2,200 to secure a place in what was recently a large oil field crowded with creaking pumps and split by a flood-control easement.

The project, Morningside, represents one of the newest wrinkles in the field of infill development--turning North County’s thousands of acres of aging oil land into residential, commercial and industrial properties.

The project, which has signed more than 140 residents since sales opened late last year, is succeeding in part because of its central location between Fullerton and Brea, general partner Justin Wilson said.

“It is an attractive location,” Wilson said, “and that is what helped determine its use. It is close to (St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton) and is in an area with a large senior population. That’s a big benefit. We don’t have any real competition, and seniors from the area come here because they don’t have to go to Riverside,” where, he said, the nearest comparable senior complex is.

Wilson describes Morningside as a “housing and continuing-care facility. Seniors come in here as independent people. If their health declines and they need skilled health care and assisted living, it is here for them, too.”

Sales have been brisk, he said, with more than half of the units already sold. The typical resident comes from within a 20-mile radius.

The land, acquired by the developer in 1989, is amid residential properties and a golf course but had remained vacant as Fullerton grew around it “because of the oil, the flood-control easement and the fact that it was crossed with horse trails that the city didn’t want to lose,” Wilson said.

When Spieker Partners, a Menlo Park development firm, formed a joint venture with a group of Fullerton-area doctors and business investors to acquire the property, those flaws enabled them to buy the land for a price well below that for comparable but problem-free land in the area, Wilson said.

“But fixing the problems has eaten up a lot of the savings,” he said.

The developers had to reroute and rebuild the equestrian trails, relocate the flood-control area by building a new channel, cap or move several dozen oil wells and clean acres of oil-contaminated soil.

But the result, Wilson said, has been worth the effort. Spieker Partners has done several infill projects, he said, “and we like them a lot. The fact that the properties are close in to things means people will want to live in them. And that offsets the cost of fixing problems often associated with infill land.”