By Eric Engelbert
A 50-Year-Old Office Park Is Coming Down. 145 Homes Are Going Up.
The Tustin Financial Plaza at 17782 E. 17th Street has been an office complex since the 1970s. Five buildings. 185,000 square feet. Decades of professional tenants occupying space in a city that has changed dramatically around them. Now all of it is coming down. Kingsbarn Capital & Development won city approval to demolish the entire complex and replace it with Cypress Grove, a 145-home for-sale community with single-family detached homes and townhomes. Construction starts in Summer 2026. It is one of the most direct examples Orange County has seen of obsolete commercial real estate being converted into ownership housing on an infill site, and it is happening in a city that needs far more of exactly this. See all new development projects across Orange County.
The Tustin Financial Plaza: Five Buildings, Fifty Years, and a Changing Market
The Tustin Financial Plaza was not a single building. It was a campus of five office structures spread across several addresses on E. 17th Street: 17772, 17782, 17822, 17852, and 17862. Built more than 50 years ago, the complex reflected the way Orange County grew in the postwar era, when suburban office parks along major arterials seemed like the logical formula for commercial development. For decades, that formula worked well enough.
What changed was everything around it. The Orange County office market has been under structural pressure since well before the pandemic. Vacancy rates climbed, asking rents flattened, and suburban office campuses without walkable amenities or proximity to transit struggled to compete with newer product in Irvine, Newport Beach, and Costa Mesa. Sagard Real Estate, a Canadian-headquartered investment firm with a global real estate portfolio, held the Tustin Financial Plaza until 2024, when the economics of holding aging suburban office finally pointed toward an exit.
The sale to Kingsbarn in 2024 was a commercial transaction in the conventional sense. From a land use perspective, it was the beginning of the end for a property type that no longer fit what the surrounding neighborhood needed.
The $27.5 Million Acquisition
A joint venture between Kingsbarn Capital & Development and The Kelemen Company purchased the Tustin Financial Plaza from Sagard Real Estate for $27.5 million, or approximately $148.65 per square foot of existing office space, in 2024. That price reflects the building's value as commercial real estate, not as a development site with approved residential entitlements.
The math on an office-to-residential conversion like this starts with the gap between what you paid for the land and what the finished homes will command. Tustin's current median active listing price is approximately $1.2 million, according to Reports on Housing, which tracks Orange County residential data. Spread across 145 homes, that is roughly $174 million in potential revenue at the market median, against a land cost of $27.5 million. The spread has to cover demolition, construction, financing, soft costs, and developer margin, but the direction of the arithmetic is clear. This is why office-to-residential conversions have accelerated across California: the land already exists, the neighborhood infrastructure already exists, and the residential demand clearly exists.
The city of Tustin benefits from this math as well. Officials noted that the proposed residential development is expected to generate approximately eight times more property tax revenue for the city than the office complex currently produces. That additional revenue goes directly into the General Fund, supporting public safety, parks, street maintenance, and other city services.
Who Is Kingsbarn Capital & Development?
Kingsbarn Realty Capital is a Las Vegas-based investment firm with more than $2.7 billion in assets under management and a real estate development pipeline exceeding $2 billion. The company operates across multiple platforms including Delaware Statutory Trusts, private equity, exchange-traded funds, and direct development through its Kingsbarn Capital & Development arm. The firm has acquired more than 325 properties across the United States and operates offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Long Beach, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and New York.
On the development side, Kingsbarn has been active in Southern California. Cypress Grove in Tustin is their highest-profile Orange County project to date. They also recently won City Council approval for Terravita, a residential development in Laguna Hills, in June 2026, and have a completed multifamily project in Durango, Colorado called Affinity at Three Springs.
The Kelemen Company, Kingsbarn's joint venture partner on the Tustin acquisition, is a California-based real estate firm with a track record in commercial property and residential development. The partnership structure is a common approach to larger infill projects, where one partner may bring the acquisition capital and the other brings local entitlement expertise and development management.
John Stack, Vice President and Development Manager at Kingsbarn Capital & Development, has been the public face of the Cypress Grove project. "This approval reflects the city's thoughtful approach to enabling housing that aligns with local needs while delivering meaningful community benefits," Stack said at the time of the entitlement announcement.
What Gets Built: 145 Homes Across Two Product Types
Cypress Grove delivers 145 for-sale homes in two formats, giving the community a range that works for different household types and price points.
The mix of detached single-family homes and attached townhomes is deliberate. Townhomes typically enter the market at a lower price point than detached homes on the same site, which expands the range of buyers who can access the community. For a project positioned toward first-time and first-time move-up buyers, having both types in one neighborhood allows buyers to choose based on budget and preference rather than having only one option.
The architectural variety matters too. Four different styles across the detached homes, plus Spanish-inspired townhomes, prevent the visual monotony that gives some new construction neighborhoods a repetitive feel. The site plan incorporates a central park spanning roughly a quarter-acre that anchors the neighborhood, plus more than 46,000 square feet of open park and recreational space and an additional 41,000 square feet of landscaped paseos, courtyards, and pedestrian-oriented open space. That is a substantial open space commitment for an infill site of this size.
Beyond the community itself, the project adds a new off-street bike path along 17th Street and updated traffic circulation at the Prospect Avenue intersection. Both improvements will benefit the surrounding neighborhood, not just Cypress Grove residents.
Who It Is For and What to Expect on Pricing
Kingsbarn has positioned Cypress Grove specifically for first-time homebuyers and first-time move-up buyers. That is a meaningful distinction in a market where most new construction in Orange County targets the upper end of the market. True entry-level new construction is rare in OC, and Tustin's infill location makes this more accessible than greenfield projects further inland or in less-connected parts of the county.
Pricing has not been announced. Kingsbarn did not disclose a target price range at entitlement approval, and construction has not started yet. The current median active listing price for homes in Tustin is approximately $1.2 million, which gives a rough sense of the market Cypress Grove will enter. New construction typically commands a premium over existing resale inventory, particularly for product with modern finishes, energy efficiency features, and new construction warranties. For a community positioned toward first-time buyers, the townhomes are likely to price more competitively than the detached homes.
Sales are expected to launch before or during construction, which is standard practice for for-sale new construction in California. If you are interested in being notified when pricing and floor plans are released, getting on a list early matters in a market where desirable new communities can move quickly.
The Bigger Picture: Tustin's Housing Challenge and What Is Coming
Tustin's state-mandated housing obligation for the 2021 to 2029 cycle is 6,782 new residential units, with approximately 3,900 of those, or 57 percent, required at moderate and low income levels. Like most Orange County cities, Tustin is working to close that gap through a combination of large planned communities at Tustin Legacy, infill conversions like Cypress Grove, and zoning changes that allow housing on commercial land.
The city is moving on multiple fronts at once. The Tustin City Council approved a Housing Element Rezone in January 2025 that rezones portions of Enderle Center and the Tustin Marketplace to allow housing, creating capacity for several hundred additional units on surface parking areas at those commercial centers. A separate 100-unit condominium project called Campo on 17th is also in the planning pipeline. And the city recently selected a developer to redevelop a vacant 52-acre parcel next to the FLIGHT office campus with experiential retail and housing.
Cypress Grove fits within this broader push because it converts a genuinely underperforming asset into something the city and the housing market actually need. A 185,000-square-foot office park built in the 1970s, sitting on land that generates a fraction of the property tax revenue that 145 homes would, is a candidate for conversion in almost any planning environment. The fact that Kingsbarn got it through entitlements in roughly a year after acquiring the site in 2024 suggests Tustin's planning process is moving with more urgency than in prior cycles. You can track this and other new projects across the county on the OC New Developments page.
Interested in New Construction in Tustin?
Cypress Grove is one of the most interesting new for-sale communities coming to Tustin in years. Whether you are a first-time buyer, a move-up buyer, or an investor watching the North OC market, understanding what is coming helps you make a better decision. Reach out and we can talk through your options.
