Mixed-Use Project Seen at Boeing Site
It’s a developer’s dream: 90 acres of property in a coastal, suburban market with a growing population and attractive demographics.
But just what will become of Boeing Co.’s historic airliner manufacturing plant in Long Beach is anybody’s guess.
The Chicago-based aerospace giant announced Friday that it would close the facility next year, leaving it up to its own internal real estate division to decide how to best play things.
The factory sits across Lakewood Boulevard from Douglas Park, a 260-acre development approved by the City Council last month. It is expected to include 1,400 homes, 11 acres of parkland and 3.3 million square feet of commercial space -- stores, offices, industrial sites and hotel rooms.
Boeing Realty Corp. spokeswoman DeDe Soto declined to say what might become of the sprawling factory that makes the company’s 717 jetliner. Real estate industry observers expect Boeing to redevelop the property into a hub of commerce and housing.
“You can take a piece of industrial land like that and turn it into great residential mixed-use community,” said Steve Soboroff, president of Playa Vista, the housing and commercial development rising near Marina del Rey. “It’s a phenomenal location.”
Others agree.
The 717 production site “is now going to become Douglas Park East,” predicted Long Beach real estate broker Robert Alperin of Cushman & Wakefield. “I’m sure they will do their darndest to get more residential. There is a huge demand for housing.”
Cutbacks in the aerospace industry, brought largely by the end of the Cold War, have created several opportunities for large-scale real estate developments in Southern California as plants and research facilities have been shuttered.
In Burbank, another aerospace hub, the former Lockheed Martin Corp. Skunk Works site is being converted to office buildings. Other former Lockheed property around the Burbank airport has been turned into shopping centers and industrial parks.
A former Loral Aeroneutronics-Ford Aerospace property in Newport Beach, where missiles were made before being closed in the 1990s, was demolished to make way for housing.
And Downey hopes to convert a former Boeing factory site where NASA scientists worked on moon-landing equipment into a shopping center, park, space museum and film production center.
At the Douglas Park property, demolition of old buildings has begun, and the company will start building infrastructure such as streets and sewers this year, Soto said. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.
The Boeing properties in Long Beach, at Lakewood Boulevard and Carson Street north of Long Beach Municipal Airport, were once part of a massive Douglas Aircraft Co. plant and headquarters.
Douglas grew from building biplanes in the 1920s to become one of the nation’s biggest defense contractors during World War II.
During peak war production, the Long Beach plant produced an airplane every two hours. Among them: the C-47 Skytrain transport and B-17 bomber, built under a license from Boeing. The factory employed more than 50,000 workers -- many of them women who typified the “Rosie the Riveter” symbol of the era.
In 1967, Douglas Aircraft was acquired by McDonnell Aircraft Co. Thirty years later, Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas Corp. In 1999, most of the Long Beach plant and headquarters were shut down.
“This is just one more step in the weeding out of the old McDonnell Douglas properties,” Cushman & Wakefield’s Alperin said.
Boeing created its Irvine-based real estate division almost three decades ago.
Its aim is to maximize the value of its surplus property, and the company has since developed more than 7 million square feet of commercial space in the U.S.
The division’s current projects include 1,000 acres of land in various stages of development, with an expected market value of $1.5 billion when built.
