By Eric Engelbert
Burlington Is Gone. 300 Apartments Are Coming.
The Burlington Coat Factory at Bella Terra in Huntington Beach closed permanently in early 2025. The 149,000-square-foot store that anchored the northwest corner of the Edinger Avenue and Beach Boulevard shopping center for decades is done. What is replacing it is the most significant new apartment project at an established Huntington Beach location in years. PGIM Real Estate, which is now the sole owner of Bella Terra, has a City Council-approved plan to build a 7-story, 300-unit mixed-use building on that site. The approvals are in hand, the tenant is out, and the project is in the permitting pipeline. Here is the full picture. Browse current homes for sale in Huntington Beach.
What Bella Terra Is and Why This Location Matters
Bella Terra is one of Huntington Beach's most-visited retail destinations. The open-air center at Edinger Avenue and Beach Boulevard is anchored by Whole Foods, Costco, Kohl's, Cinemark Theaters, Barnes and Noble, and The Cheesecake Factory, with more than 60 other tenants filling the rest of the 880,000-square-foot property. The center already has two residential buildings: The Residences at Bella Terra (managed by UDR) and The Artisan Residences at Bella Terra. The new 300-unit project would be a third residential building on the same campus, built where the Burlington Coat Factory once stood.
The site has a long history. It opened as Huntington Center in the mid-1960s, with an original anchor lineup that included JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, and Broadway department stores. It was enclosed into a traditional indoor mall in the 1970s, then converted to an open-air format in the 1990s and rebranded as Bella Terra. DJM Capital acquired the property nearly 20 years ago and spent years repositioning it with a more experiential retail and dining mix, adding a stage, lawn, and beer garden to the central courtyard. The plan to add housing is the next chapter in that evolution.
The location is strong by any measure. Edinger Avenue and Beach Boulevard is one of the highest-traffic intersections in all of Orange County. The mall is close to the 405 freeway, has strong transit connections, and sits in the middle of a dense residential and commercial area. Adding housing here is the kind of infill that planners and developers have been pointing to for years as the right move for underused retail land near major employers and transit corridors.
The Project: What Is Being Built and How
The project, designed by TCA Architects, calls for a 7-story mixed-use building with 300 apartments on the upper floors and 25,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space at the ground level. The ground floor also incorporates a porte-cochere drop-off within the new residential parking garage footprint, and the design includes enhanced pedestrian pathways to activate the edges of the new building and connect them to the existing mall.
The new residential parking garage will have 404 spaces across three levels, with a direct ground-floor connection to the existing retail parking structure via an internal three-lane street. That shared connection allows residential guests and retail visitors to use both garages, which is a practical solution for a dense infill site within an active shopping center.
The design also integrates with the mall's existing central courtyard. The community social space for the new residential building will extend directly off the mall's renovated amphitheater and existing plaza, creating a connection between the apartment amenities and the public spaces of the shopping center.
The total building size is approximately 352,461 square feet of residential space plus 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. At 300 units on the site, the project comes in at roughly 41 units per acre, which is high-density by most Huntington Beach standards but well below the maximums allowed in cities like Anaheim and Santa Ana.
The Affordable Housing Component
The project sets aside 45 units, or 15 percent of the total, as deed-restricted affordable housing. These are income-restricted apartments that qualify toward Huntington Beach's state-mandated obligation to produce housing at below-market rates. Deed-restricted means the affordability requirement is attached to the unit and stays in place regardless of ownership changes.
For a private market-rate project at a retail center owned by a major institutional investor, a 15 percent affordable set-aside is a meaningful commitment. It reflects both the project's desire to satisfy state housing mandate requirements and the city's interest in seeing some affordability built into large new developments. The number of units in each income category has not been publicly detailed, but income-restricted apartments in projects like this are typically targeted at households earning 50 to 80 percent of area median income.
The 45 affordable units are part of why this project matters to Huntington Beach's housing picture. They count directly toward the city's state-mandated housing production numbers and represent a type of affordable housing that gets built inside an active retail environment rather than in a standalone affordable-only complex.
Burlington Closed. What the Timeline Looks Like Now.
The original project timeline called for a groundbreaking in late 2023 and a completion around early 2026, roughly 30 months of construction. That timeline did not hold. Burlington Coat Factory closed permanently at Bella Terra in early 2025, clearing the site, but as of mid-2026 the project is still working through plan check and permitting rather than breaking ground.
Burlington's closure is meaningful because it removes one of the biggest practical obstacles to starting construction. The demolition of a 149,000-square-foot occupied building is a complex undertaking, and closing a national tenant early is not a small step. The fact that Burlington is out suggests the ownership side of this project is moving forward intentionally, even if the permitting timeline has stretched.
The adjacent Building E, a 33,331-square-foot inline retail building that is also being demolished to make way for the new construction, may still need to be vacated and cleared. Once both structures are down, the construction phase on the 7-story building can begin. Based on the original 30-month construction estimate, a realistic opening window for completed apartments would be sometime in 2027 or 2028 depending on when permits are finalized and the crane goes up.
A New Sole Owner: What the DJM Exit Means
DJM Capital Partners co-developed Bella Terra alongside PGIM Real Estate for nearly two decades. In early 2025, DJM sold its 25 percent stake to PGIM, making PGIM the sole owner of the property. The sale was reported as part of a normal portfolio exit on DJM's part after a long hold period.
For the residential project, the ownership change is worth noting but not necessarily alarming. PGIM Real Estate is one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world, with a long track record of owning and operating large mixed-use retail centers and residential assets. PGIM taking full ownership does not mean the residential project is at risk; it means a single institutional owner now controls all decisions about the site without needing partner alignment.
The practical effect could go either direction. A sole owner can move faster on decisions without requiring partner sign-off. Alternatively, a new sole owner might take time to review the project before pushing forward. The fact that Burlington's closure happened on PGIM's watch suggests the project remains active under the new ownership structure.
Huntington Beach's Housing Mandate and Why This Project Matters
Huntington Beach is required by the state to plan for 13,368 new homes during the 6th RHNA cycle running from 2021 to 2029. The city spent years fighting that obligation in court, refusing to adopt a compliant housing element and passing local ordinances intended to block state housing laws. In December 2025, a San Diego Superior Court issued an order requiring the city to bring its housing element into compliance with state law and amend its zoning accordingly. In February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the city's challenge, leaving the court order in place.
The court order includes expedited requirements for Builder's Remedy projects, the state law that allows developers to bypass local zoning in cities that lack a certified housing element. The order requires Huntington Beach to approve Builder's Remedy applications within 60 days for projects with 150 units or fewer and within 90 days for projects with more than 150 units. Failure to meet those deadlines results in automatic approval.
The Bella Terra Residential project was approved by the City Council under normal zoning, not under Builder's Remedy. It does not need the court order to proceed. But the broader housing pressure context matters: Huntington Beach is under legal obligation to approve housing projects at a pace it has historically resisted, and private projects like Bella Terra Residential are part of how the city gets to its required numbers. You can see how Huntington Beach compares to other OC cities on the OC New Developments page.
What This Means for Renters, Buyers, and Investors
For renters looking in Huntington Beach: Bella Terra Residential will eventually add 300 apartments to a location that already has grocery access, dining, theaters, and retail on the same campus. It is likely to come in at market-rate pricing consistent with the high end of the Huntington Beach rental market, with a portion of units at income-restricted rents. The project is not open yet, but it is worth watching as it moves through permitting. Browse Huntington Beach real estate listings.
For buyers near the area: The neighborhoods adjacent to Bella Terra are a mix of older single-family homes and condominium communities. A new high-quality mixed-use building at the mall's edge is more likely to stabilize and support surrounding values than to hurt them, particularly once the construction disruption passes. Buyers looking at properties near Edinger and Beach should factor in a multi-year construction period at that intersection when evaluating timing.
For investors watching the retail-to-residential trend: Bella Terra is the most prominent example of this conversion in Huntington Beach, but it is happening at Bella Terra, MainPlace in Santa Ana, and Westminster Mall as well. The pattern is consistent: large institutional owners of underperforming retail square footage are trading it for apartments above ground-floor retail that keeps foot traffic alive. Properties near these conversion sites tend to attract more attention from developers as the first project demonstrates what is possible.
The Biggest New Housing Story at an HB Mall
Bella Terra Residential is not the flashiest project in Orange County, but it is the most practical: a big-box store that made sense in 1990 is making way for 300 homes in 2026 at one of the most well-served retail locations in Huntington Beach. Burlington is gone. The permits are in process. The question is when the crane shows up. I will update this post when construction breaks ground or when a leasing timeline is announced. If you want to talk through what this means for real estate you own or are looking at near this area, reach out anytime.
