PLC Land Puts Houses on Unusual Sites

With property prices surging, PLC Land Co. and other developers still looking to build in Orange County are putting homes on unusual sites.

Westridge, a 400-home development, is being built by PLC on a former Chevron oil-drilling site. The project is bounded by Idaho Street, Beach Boulevard and Imperial Highway in La Habra.

More than 13 million yards of dirt will be moved for the project, which features gated homes built around a golf course, said Chris Gibbs, president of the Newport Beach firm that specializes in recycling such sites. He said the company is spending $50 million on development costs, and expects to reap $175 million in sales.

The company recently completed a similar project called Huntington SeaCliff in Huntington Beach. More than 771 of the 2,600 units have been sold at prices ranging from $200,000 to $800,000.

“With today’s economy, these projects are more feasible,” said Gibbs, adding that his 2-year-old firm is continuing to look for sites in Southern and Northern California. The Westridge project targets buyers looking for bigger homes. Ranging from 2,000 to 3,900 square feet, these houses are expected to be priced from the low-$300,000 range when selling begins later this month.

Developments on former industrial sites are more common in industrial Midwestern and Eastern states, said Michael Pawlukiewicz,, an environmental land-use expert at the Urban Land Institute in Washington. But if the property and cleanup costs work out to roughly the same cost as nonindustrial land, projects like these work well for investors, he said.