Segerstrom OK’d for Office-Industrial Project in Santa Ana

C.J. Segerstrom & Sons will tear down an aging office park in Santa Ana to build a 313,000-square-foot industrial campus.

The Costa Mesa-based investor owned by the Segerstrom family was approved by the Santa Ana City Council to build the three-building industrial complex at 3100, 3110 and 3120 West Lake Center Drive, the Orange County Business Journal reported.

The flex campus will replace the 10-acre Lake Center Office Park, a two-story, three-building office complex built in the early 1980s. The occupancy of the park, located on Google Maps at 3700 South Susan Street, was not disclosed.

They would be replaced by three industrial buildings on nearly 16 acres, which would include a 5.6-acre lot added to the Lake Center Office Park site, according to plans for the project filed last fall.

The new light industrial campus, dubbed South Coast Technology Center, could include corporate offices, research and development, light manufacturing and warehouses, according to the city.

The project will contain outdoor patios, landscaping, surface parking, electric vehicle charging stations, a public park and improvements to nearby streets and sidewalks.

A timeline for the $126 million project was not disclosed. A spokeswoman for the project said the tech center could be open for tenants as early as next year.

The pivot from Class B offices to Class A industrial reflects a decline in office development after a broad shift to remote work.

Vacancy in Orange County’s 104 million-square-foot office market is 16 percent, according to the Business Journal.

Vacancy in OC’s 238 million-square-foot industrial market is 4.2 percent, according to Voit Real Estate Services. While industrial vacancy has more than doubled in the past year, it “remains low” by historical standards, according to the brokerage firm.

C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, founded nearly 125 years ago, owns the upscale South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and office towers in Orange County.

The family firm has filed plans to redevelop a 100,000-square-foot shopping center north of its indoor mall with a 1.9-million-square-foot urban-retail village with nearly 1,600 homes.

Plans by Segerstrom would replace the 17.2-acre South Coast Plaza Village at 1621 Sunflower Avenue in Santa Ana with a project dubbed The Village Santa Ana, to include 1,583 homes, up to 300,000 square feet of offices and up to 80,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.

Related California, based in Irvine, has also moved forward with plans to replace a shopping center in Santa Ana with an urban retail village with nearly 4,000 homes north of South Coast Plaza.

— Dana Bartholomew