Plans Revived for Mola Centre in Irvine

A partnership led by Newport Beach-based Koll Development Co. intends to revive plans to build one of Irvine’s largest real estate projects, the 1-million-square-foot Mola Centre office and hotel development. The development was halted earlier in the decade when toxic waste was discovered on the site.

Koll and Legacy Co., also of Newport Beach, have agreed to partner with Prudential Insurance Co. to develop a low-rise office campus, hotel and some retail space on 28 acres at the intersection of Jamboree Road and Campus Drive. The property has sat untouched since 1991, graced only by a set of Romanesque statues.

Koll officials say that within a month they will submit new plans to the city of Irvine for the office park, a speculative project tentatively called the Bluff. They expect to break ground five months later.

“We’re staying within the original plans and just reducing the density,” said Tim Strader, Legacy president and a founding partner of Koll. “We are going to try to build [for] the market, which right now is requesting low- to mid-rise buildings.”

The first phase of the project, which is being designed by Langdon Wilson of Newport Beach, will cost nearly $125 million. It will consist of 280,000 square feet of two-, three- and four-story office buildings; and a 215-room extended-stay hotel. So far, no tenants have signed leases for the buildings and no buyer has been found for the hotel parcel. Two more planned phases will contain additional office and space for retail businesses such as a coffee shop and a dry cleaner.

The original plans for Mola Centre had included two office towers, a high-rise condominium building, a Hyatt hotel, movie theater, health club, day-care center, restaurant, stores and apartments. Only an apartment building, called Toscana, was built before the extent of the contamination was discovered.

Most of the 200,000 square feet of retail those plans called for will be for office use instead, because several shopping centers have been built in the area recently.

However, real estate analysts, including Alfred Gobar of Placentia, caution that a project of this size could, at least temporarily, bring down office occupancy and rents in the fast-growing John Wayne Airport area.

Office vacancy in the airport market was a low 4.6% in the fourth quarter of last year, relatively unchanged from the previous year, and rents averaged $2.26 per square foot per month, according to CB Richard Ellis. Strader says rent at the Bluff, which will be less expensive to build than a high-rise, will average around $2.

Legal wrangling surrounding the toxic cleanup was settled last year. The cleanup is still underway but does not threaten development, according to regional water board officials.

Higher-than-anticipated contamination from industrial solvents was discovered in 1991, when the original developer had begun building on the former Beckman Instruments plant site.

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Project On Again?

Site for Mola Centre office, hotel buildings