Pauling Road Address Fits New Vitamin Factory to a ‘C’

What better place to put a vitamin factory than on Pauling Road in Foothill Ranch? After all, the street is named after the late Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who helped to make Vitamin C a household word.

What’s more, Jay Patrick, the 84-year-old founder and president of Alacer Corp., counted Pauling, who died in 1994, as a mentor and friend. During the 1970s, the two men helped to popularize the benefits of taking Vitamin C.

Patrick was supposed to preside over a March 14 groundbreaking for the new, 58,000-square-foot plant and headquarters office that Alacer wants to build on Pauling Road. But Mother Nature intervened with a rainstorm, and the groundbreaking will be rescheduled at an as-yet-undetermined date.

About 100 people work at the company’s existing facility in Irvine, which manufactures vitamins and dietary supplements. The new plant will turn out Alacer’s line of vitamin and mineral tablets, along with a topical nutrition skin-care line.

As for the Pauling Road name, Alacer spokesman Michael Maynard says that it was a bit of “weird luck.” Patrick was reviewing several possible sites in Foothill Ranch when he saw the Pauling sign that helped to clinch the deal.

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Greg Johnson covers retail businesses and restaurants for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5950 and at greg.johnson@latimes.com.