Developer Wins UCI Achievement Award
John Parker, a longtime Orange County real estate developer, received the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management.
Parker, managing partner of Aliso Viejo-based Parker Partners, received the Sumigarden Award, an engraved crystal sphere that’s given to a person whose lifetime achievements have made an indelible mark on Orange County’s real estate industry.
Parker, 71, started Parker Properties in 1975, and five years later formed Equidon Companies with a partner. Together, they developed 23 projects totaling more than 5 million square feet, and cost more than $400 million to build. Among the best-known projects are the Atrium office building in Irvine, Gateway Shopping Center in Mission Viejo and the Sperry-Univac headquarters in Irvine.
Parker’s current project, called Summit, is a 63-acre office campus under construction in Aliso Viejo. When completed, Summit will comprise 17 office buildings that will total 1.7 million square feet, making it the largest office development in South County other than the Irvine Co.’s Spectrum.
“This was more meaningful for me because it comes from my peers and encompasses a lifetime and referred specifically to ethics and giving back to the community. That meant a lot to me,” Parker said. “I was very flattered.”
The award’s past recipients have included Michael Meyer, retired managing partner of E&Y; Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group in Orange County; Ray Watson, vice chairman of the Irvine Co., and one of the principal designers of Irvine, the world’s largest master-planned community; Henry Segerstrom, who heads C.J. Segerstrom & Co., which owns South Coast Plaza and several surrounding office buildings; and the late John Lusk, whose Irvine-based company built more than 40,000 homes and scores of shopping centers, office buildings and industrial parks across Southern California.
