Posted July 2026 | By Eric Engelbert | Updated as the project progresses.
Central Pointe: How 8.5 Acres of Long-Held Santa Ana Land Became One of the Largest Apartment Projects in the City's History
The 8.5-acre site at 1801 East Fourth Street in Santa Ana has an unusual backstory for a modern apartment project. It was not a former shopping center, a gas station, or an industrial building. It was farmland, one of the last remaining agricultural parcels in what had become an urbanized stretch of eastern Santa Ana, held by the same family for more than three decades while the city grew around it. The Argyros family, through their Costa Mesa-based real estate company Arnel and Affiliates, acquired the property when it was still one of the last agricultural holdouts in urban Orange County and spent the following decades trying to figure out what to do with it.
Now called Central Pointe, the project that will eventually occupy that site will bring 644 rental apartments and 15,130 square feet of ground-floor retail to East Fourth Street. Newport Beach-based Waterford Property Company spent three years, from 2018 through January 2021, shepherding the entitlements through the City of Santa Ana. Ledcor Properties then acquired the entitled site from the Argyros family for $51 million in September 2022. Ground broke in December 2025. As of mid-2026, the project is in early construction. The two five-story buildings designed by KTGY Architecture and Planning represent a total project investment estimated at $315 million.
The Site: Three Decades of Agricultural Land in a Changing City
When Arnel and Affiliates acquired the parcel at 4th Street and Cabrillo Park Drive, the land was farmland. As Orange County urbanized rapidly through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the surrounding area filled in with commercial development, apartments, and freeway infrastructure, while the Argyros family's parcel remained largely untouched. By the 2000s, it had become one of the last sizeable vacant sites in eastern Santa Ana, surrounded by the I-5 Freeway interchange, the Cabrillo Park neighborhood, and a corridor of commercial uses along Fourth Street.
The family made its first serious attempt to redevelop the site in 2006, when they entered discussions with Shea Homes to build a 600-unit residential project with 7,750 square feet of commercial space. Those plans never moved forward. The timing was poor: market sentiment shifted sharply as the early signs of the housing crisis emerged, and the financing environment for new construction fell apart. The site remained vacant through the Great Recession and the slow recovery that followed.
The Metro East Mixed-Use Overlay District rezoning, completed approximately seven years before Waterford's involvement, finally created a workable entitlement framework for a site of this scale. The overlay was specifically designed to accommodate large, transit-oriented, mixed-use projects on parcels that were too big and too complex for parcel-by-parcel redevelopment. Once that framework was in place, the economics of developing the site at meaningful density became much more viable, and Arnel brought in Waterford to head the entitlement process in 2018.
644 Apartments, 15,000 SF of Retail, and a Seven-Level Parking Structure
Central Pointe consists of two five-story residential buildings, each wrapping around a central seven-level parking structure. The configuration keeps vehicle access concentrated in the interior of the site while reserving the street-facing perimeter for residential units and ground-floor retail, a layout that is standard for larger mixed-use wrap projects but uncommon at this scale in Santa Ana. Together, the two buildings will deliver 644 apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom units. Ground-floor retail and restaurant space fronting East Fourth Street totals 15,130 square feet. Approved plans call for a total of 1,318 parking spaces, a ratio of approximately 1.82 spaces per unit.
KTGY Architecture and Planning designed the project with rooftop amenity decks positioned above the parking structures. Open space is concentrated in landscaped interior courtyards between the residential wings, with green space accessible to residents throughout the site. The project is positioned for the millennial renter and empty nester demographic, targeting people who want proximity to Orange County's employment corridors in Irvine, the Anaheim/Santa Ana business parks, and the tech clusters near the I-5 and I-55 freeway interchange without paying Irvine rental rates.
| Project Name | Central Pointe Mixed-Use Development |
|---|---|
| Address | 1801 E. Fourth Street, Santa Ana, CA 92701 |
| Total Units | 644 apartments (studio through 3BR) |
| Commercial Space | 15,130 SF ground-floor retail/restaurant along E. 4th St. |
| Buildings | Two 5-story buildings, each wrapped around a 7-level parking structure |
| Parking | 1,318 spaces (1.82 per unit) |
| Site Size | Approximately 8.5 acres |
| Project Cost | Approximately $315 million |
| Prior Land Use | Agricultural / vacant (held by Argyros family/Arnel for 30+ years) |
| Prior Landowner | Arnel and Affiliates (Argyros family, Costa Mesa) |
| Land Sale Price | $51 million (September 2022; $6 million per acre) |
| Land Buyer | Ledcor Properties, Inc. (San Diego / Vancouver) |
| Developer / Entitlement | Waterford Property Company (Newport Beach); Sean Rawson, Co-Founder |
| Architecture | KTGY Architecture + Planning |
| Zoning | Metro East Mixed-Use Overlay District (MEMU) |
| Ground Breaking | December 2025 |
| City Planner | Fernanda Arias, Associate Planner — (714) 667-2792 |
Unit Mix
The Entitlement Path: Three Years from Sunshine Meeting to City Council Approval
Waterford Property Company joined the project as Arnel's fee development partner in 2018 and filed the first application with the City of Santa Ana shortly thereafter. The project was referred to informally as "4th and Cabrillo" during the entitlement phase, reflecting its location near Cabrillo Park. The Sunshine Ordinance community meeting was held on Thursday, August 15, 2019, from 6:00 to 7:00 pm at Creekside Plaza, 505 North Tustin Avenue, Suite 243, Santa Ana. Sean Rawson, Waterford's co-founder, presented the project directly to 15 community members along with the project's architect from KTGY and landscape architect Matt Jackson. Rawson described the project at that early stage as 650 units of luxury apartments with retail on the ground floor and estimated the project would create 500 jobs and generate $36 million in short-term economic activity for the city.
Questions at the community meeting centered on parking and traffic. Residents near the Mabury cul-de-sacs expressed concern about spillover parking and cut-through traffic on local streets as the project's residents commute to and from the site. Rawson and the team committed to a full traffic study during the entitlement period and noted that an additional traffic lane on Fourth Street was being considered. Utility poles along the project frontage will be undergrounded as part of the project's conditions. Residents also asked about affordable units, and the applicant noted compliance with the Housing Opportunity Ordinance but said the specific option had not yet been selected.
Planning Commission reviewed the project in two stages: a work study session on October 12, 2020 and public hearings on October 26 and November 9, 2020. City Council held a virtual public hearing on January 19, 2021, at which the project received final approval. The entitlement took just under two and a half years from the Sunshine meeting to City Council, a relatively efficient timeline for a project of this scale. Waterford co-founder Sean Rawson later told the Orange County Business Journal that Central Pointe was the largest entitlement project Waterford had completed in Orange County to that point.
About Waterford Property Company, Ledcor Properties, and the Argyros Family
Waterford Property Company
Waterford Property Company is a Newport Beach-based multifamily developer co-founded by Sean Rawson and John Drachman. The two founders came from different corners of multifamily real estate: Rawson previously served as Southern California President for St. Anton Partners, a privately held multifamily development company; Drachman founded Stillwater Investment Group. They began working together on joint ventures and in 2015 formally merged their respective companies, Stillwater Investment Group, The Waterford Group, and Waterford Residential, into Waterford Property Company. The combined firm now manages over 6,500 units and has collectively acquired or managed more than $2.8 billion in projects throughout California. Waterford is known particularly for workforce housing, having converted thousands of market-rate apartment units across Southern California into middle-income rental communities for households priced out of ownership but above the income thresholds for subsidized affordable housing. Central Pointe represents Waterford's largest fee entitlement engagement in Orange County.
Ledcor Properties
Ledcor Properties, Inc. is the real estate development arm of Ledcor Group, a Vancouver-based construction and development company with a broad North American footprint. Ledcor develops commercial and residential projects across Canada and the United States. In Southern California, Ledcor is best known for the Shoreline Gateway development in downtown Long Beach, the 35-story luxury apartment tower that became the tallest building in Long Beach upon completion. Central Pointe is Ledcor's first known development project in Orange County. Ledcor paid $51 million for the entitled site in September 2022, a transaction that topped all Orange County multifamily land deals year-to-date according to CoStar Group records at the time.
The Argyros Family and Arnel and Affiliates
Arnel and Affiliates is the Costa Mesa-based real estate development and investment company founded by the Argyros family. The company is reported to own close to 4,500 apartment units in Orange County and is one of the most prominent private real estate holders in the county. The Argyros family held the 1801 East Fourth Street site for more than three decades before selling it to Ledcor, having originally acquired the parcel when it was one of the last remaining agricultural land sites in urban Orange County. The $51 million sale closed in September 2022.
What Central Pointe Means for Buyers and Renters in Eastern Santa Ana
Central Pointe sits within the same Metro East corridor that has attracted several other large apartment developments in recent years, including the Greystar Row at Red Hill project to the south. The corridor is being shaped by the same forces: relatively affordable land compared to coastal Orange County, existing freeway access to employment nodes in Irvine and Anaheim, and a zoning overlay that makes large-scale mixed-use development financially viable in a way that parcel-by-parcel development is not. Central Pointe's 644 units, when leased, will add meaningful supply to an area that has historically been underserved by professionally managed, amenity-rich apartment communities.
The project's 15,130 square feet of retail is modestly sized by design. A market analysis completed by The Concord Group during the entitlement period concluded that the site's trade area, with approximately 9,800 households within one mile and incomes below the county median, could not support a grocery anchor or a large retail footprint. The planned retail is designed to complement the residential community rather than function as a regional shopping destination. Restaurant and service-oriented tenants are the most likely occupants.
For buyers active in the surrounding area, Central Pointe is one of several signals pointing to continued investment in the 4th Street corridor east of downtown. Projects of this scale take years from ground breaking to stabilization, and the surrounding single-family and small multifamily market will evolve alongside the construction cycle. Buyers who are comparing ownership costs to renting in the area will have a large, professionally managed rental option to benchmark against once Central Pointe reaches lease-up, which based on the December 2025 ground breaking and a 30-month construction window is likely to fall in late 2027 to early 2028.
Tracking the East 4th Street Corridor? We Can Help You Buy, Sell, or Compare.
Whether you are a buyer watching how new rental supply is affecting values along East 4th Street, an investor evaluating the corridor's long-term trajectory, or a renter who wants to understand what ownership could cost compared to a project like Central Pointe, we work with clients at every stage of the decision across Santa Ana and all of Orange County.
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