Developer Sees Acres of Potential in Santa Ana
When developers scramble to build on rapidly dwindling vacant land in Orange County, signs of new construction often are met with protest.
Except in Santa Ana.
This city of 320,000 residents is about to get its first large luxury neighborhood in a quarter of a century, and the sound of rumbling trucks and pounding nails will be welcomed by many.
Beginning this fall, Brock Homes will construct 72 upscale homes in north Santa Ana next to Floral Park, one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. The as-yet unnamed gated community, hugging the banks of the Santa Ana River, will feature wide streets, shade trees and prices starting around $350,000.
“This is the most exciting thing I’ve done in a long time,” said Horace Hogan, president of Brock Homes, a Santa Ana division of Ryland, one of the nation’s largest home builders. Last year, Brock built 400 homes in the Southland.
Orange County’s home-building boom has eluded many older cities such as Santa Ana, where only about 1% of the city’s land--less than 100 acres--is vacant.
Although Brock’s $23-million development isn’t large enough to affect Santa Ana’s real estate market overall, the new homes reflect renewed interest in the county’s oldest city.
There has been mixed success in redeveloping the city’s core, where several offices and businesses still stand vacant, but California’s ninth-largest city is enjoying its strongest wave of commercial development in years.
Santa Ana recently opened three new shopping centers, two art galleries and a cafe across the street from the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. The St. Joseph Ballet wants to build a home downtown. First American Financial Corp., one of the city’s largest employers, is creating a new headquarters at MacArthur Square in the southern part of town.
The 17-story, $158-million Federal Court Building opens this fall in the Civic Center complex downtown, along with the Discovery Science Center, a $23-million children’s learning facility on Main Street.
And Cal State Fullerton recently broke ground on a $5.9-million student art center, the cornerstone of downtown’s Artists Village.
“This is a boom time for the city of Santa Ana,” said David N. Ream, Santa Ana’s city manager, adding that more than $500 million in projects are in the works.
Brock’s new homes symbolize the city’s attempt at attracting more well-heeled home buyers, who for decades have shunned Santa Ana for the beach cities to the south and the foothills to the east.
A Surprising Discovery
Hogan, Brock’s president, came across the site about 10 years ago by accident. Seeing traffic backed up on the Santa Ana Freeway, he exited the freeway at Flower Street in search of an alternative route to South County, where he had a meeting.
His detour led him along wide, shaded streets. Block after block, winding his way through Floral Park, he saw California Tudors, Spanish-style homes and eclectic mansions painted in colors ranging from mauve to pumpkin, lemon yellow to light blue.
“The architecture, and how it was held together by a rich landscape palette, was unbelievable to me,” Hogan said.
He has been eyeing the neighborhood ever since, attending open houses and incorporating elements of what he saw in other new-home designs. He also noted that the home values in the area held steady even through the recession, in the $300,000 range and higher.
A few blocks away, Hogan also noticed the Olive Grove apartment complex. Built in the 1960s, the project that once provided quality housing had deteriorated into an overcrowded eyesore, suffering from poor management and neglect.
Police visits to quell fights and drug dealing were frequent, and there were numerous building code violations. Finally, Olive Grove was vacated and boarded up. Two years ago, the city sued the owners to have the structure torn down.
As soon as a sale sign was planted, Hogan was ready. Before anyone else bid, he struck the deal that would turn his concept into reality.
Located in the 2800 block of North Bristol Street, Brock’s project will combine the elements of old-fashioned neighborhoods with the accouterments of new suburbia. Like Floral Park, the homes will have traditional styling such as shutters, shingles and stucco, but they will have bigger garages and kitchens and more bathrooms, Hogan said.
The lots, some backing up to the River View Golf Course, will average 7,000 square feet--nearly double the size of lots in typical new home tracts in Orange County. Many homes also will have front porches.
“People are going back to the nostalgia from the 1920s through the 1940s,” Hogan said of the type of houses that once thrived in California. He wants to instill that kind of character in the new neighborhood.
“That’s what this project is all about,” he said.
Taking a Gamble
It also is what home buyers increasingly are looking for, according to a recent Times Orange County Poll on housing. A survey of 600 Orange County homeowners found that they wanted older-style homes in a setting that created a stronger sense of neighborhood but was still close to work, shopping and dining.
The Brock development is near an onramp to the Santa Ana Freeway, less than a mile from the MainPlace/Santa Ana shopping center and a stone’s throw from large office buildings.
Hogan believes those attributes will help minimize the risk of building pricey homes in a city whose image has taken a beating over the years.
Because of decades-old stereotypes, building luxury homes in Santa Ana is a big gamble.
For many, the city represents the things that caused people to flee Los Angeles for Orange County beginning in the 1950s: a dense, diverse population, a perception of high crime rates, and older and smaller homes that lacked prestige.
In fact, the city’s crime rate has fallen below such places as Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz.
Joseph Duffy, lured by the city’s cultural and architectural diversity, recalled the reactions of friends when he and his wife moved to Floral Park from Huntington Beach about eight years ago.
“The first thing they thought was, ‘Did you lose your job?’ ” said Duffy, who three years ago also moved his advertising firm to Santa Ana. He converted part of an old bank building into a New York-style loft office, at one-third the cost of locating elsewhere.
After they saw the neighborhood, Duffy said, people’s perceptions often changed.
That’s the result Hogan is aiming for when his model homes open in September.
“It’s a bold move on Brock’s part,” said Michael Meyer, managing partner at E&Y;/Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group. “But Santa Ana is a community that could really benefit from a shot in the arm like this.”
