By Eric Engelbert
Six Years Vacant. Now 93 Townhomes.
The Orchard Supply Hardware at 8030 Dale Street in Buena Park went dark in late 2018 when Lowe's shut down all 99 of its OSH locations nationwide. The 44,000-square-foot building sat idle for the better part of six years while the property changed hands twice and various redevelopment ideas came and went. That wait is over. Brandywine Homes received City Council approval in November 2024 to replace the site with 93 for-sale townhomes in a Spanish colonial design. The project is one of the few ground-up for-sale residential developments moving forward in North Orange County right now, and it represents exactly the kind of infill conversion that Buena Park and California more broadly have been pushing for on dead retail land. Browse new construction homes in Buena Park.
From Hardware Store to Housing: The Site's History
Orchard Supply Hardware was a California institution. Founded in San Jose in 1931 as a farm supply cooperative, it eventually grew into a neighborhood hardware chain that catered to the kind of serious weekend homeowner who wanted more than what a big-box warehouse could offer. The Buena Park location at 8030 Dale Street was fully renovated for OSH in 2015, when the chain signed a 20-year lease to anchor a commercial strip in a dense residential neighborhood.
The problem was the parent company. Lowe's had acquired OSH out of bankruptcy in 2013, but the chain never quite fit with Lowe's core model. In August 2018, Lowe's announced it would close all 99 OSH locations, with all stores shuttered by the end of the year. The Buena Park store went dark along with the rest. A 20-year lease that had barely started was suddenly irrelevant, and a newly renovated 44,000-square-foot building was left sitting empty on a busy corner of Dale Street.
The property sold in November 2019 for $10,650,000, going from the original OSH-affiliated ownership to DRP Holdings LLC. That purchase price reflected the building's value as vacant retail, not as a development site. For the next several years, the building sat unused as the North Orange County retail market tried to figure out what to do with a growing inventory of former big-box shells. Eventually the property was transferred to Perge Ventures Inc., which held it until Brandywine came along.
The $18.85 Million Land Sale
On March 3, 2025, Brandywine Acquisition Group LLC purchased the 3.87-acre site from Perge Ventures Inc. for $18,850,000. Colliers Senior Executive Vice President Chuck Wilson represented both buyer and seller in the transaction. That price works out to roughly $4.87 million per acre, or about $202,700 per planned door in land cost alone.
That is a significant number for a townhome project. For context, the same site sold for $10.65 million in 2019. The intermediate owner nearly doubled the land value in six years primarily through the entitlement process, as the project's approvals were substantially in motion by the time Brandywine closed. Brandywine submitted its development plans to the city back in June 2023, and the City Council approved the project in November 2024. By the time the final land sale closed in early 2025, the hard work of rezoning and permitting was essentially complete.
For a for-sale townhome project to pencil at that land basis, Brandywine will need pricing in the mid-to-upper range that the North OC market will support. Comparable new townhomes in Buena Park, Anaheim, and Fullerton in recent years have sold from the mid-$700,000s to well over $1 million depending on size, finishes, and timing. Brandywine has not announced pricing for Dale Townhomes.
Who Is Brandywine Homes?
Brandywine Homes is a family-owned homebuilder and community developer that has been building in Southern California since 1994. The Irvine-area firm specializes in infill development: taking underutilized, vacant, or commercially zoned land in established neighborhoods and converting it into for-sale housing. Their tagline captures the approach well: "rebuilding older cities into something residents can afford and take pride in."
Brandywine is not a national production builder. They build in smaller community sizes, typically under 100 units, and focus on design quality and neighborhood context. Their current active communities include The Gables in Garden Grove, Alisal in Glendora, and Persimmon in Pomona. Past completed communities in Orange County include Treviso in Anaheim (23 luxury townhomes), Villena in Placentia (26 townhomes), and Arletta in Fullerton (33 townhomes and flats). The firm also has a Local Hero Program that provides incentives for military members, first responders, teachers, and healthcare workers.
The Dale Street project in Buena Park is a larger community by Brandywine standards at 93 units, but it fits squarely within their model of replacing vacant retail with for-sale infill housing in neighborhoods that have the density and transit access to support it.
What Gets Built: 93 Spanish Colonial Townhomes
The approved plan calls for 93 townhomes spread across 14 detached buildings on the 3.87-acre site. The architecture is Spanish colonial in style. The unit mix breaks down as follows: 39 two-bedroom units and 54 three-bedroom units, providing a range of options for smaller households and families alike.
Each home includes an attached two-car garage at ground level, with one to two floors of living space above. Total building area comes in at approximately 187,500 square feet. The project also provides 212 on-site parking spaces total, meaning residents and guests have access to parking beyond the individual garages. Open space areas and landscaping with trees for privacy are included throughout the community.
The detached building format, where each of the 14 buildings is a separate structure rather than one continuous block, gives the community a more neighborhood-like feel than a single large complex. It also reduces the mass of the project relative to the surrounding street environment on Dale Street, which is primarily lower-scale residential and commercial.
The Affordable Housing Component
Of the 93 homes, 16 units are designated as income-restricted: 14 at the moderate-income level and 2 at the low-income level. Together they represent about 17 percent of the total project, above the 15 percent threshold common in many Orange County inclusionary programs.
For a for-sale townhome project, income-restricted units are priced below market rate at purchase and may carry resale restrictions that keep them affordable for a set number of years. Moderate-income units in Orange County are typically targeted at households earning between 80 and 120 percent of area median income. Low-income units are generally targeted at households earning below 80 percent of AMI. These 16 homes represent real buying opportunities for income-qualified buyers in a market where affordable new construction is rare.
The 16 affordable units also count toward Buena Park's state-mandated housing production numbers under California's RHNA process, one of the mechanisms the state uses to ensure cities approve their share of housing at various income levels.
What Happens Next
With City Council approval secured in November 2024 and the land sale closed in March 2025, the Dale Townhomes project is in the construction permitting and preparation phase. Brandywine does not build at the scale of a national production builder, so their communities tend to move methodically rather than at the pace of a Lennar or Taylor Morrison. A construction start in late 2025 or 2026 is a reasonable expectation, with homes available for purchase sometime thereafter depending on build sequence and phasing.
Brandywine typically opens sales before or during construction, so interested buyers may be able to get on a list before the first units are complete. Their broker program also offers commission structures for agents who register buyers, which is worth noting if you are working with a client looking in North OC. You can see other active development projects across Orange County on the OC New Developments page.
For the Dale Street neighborhood, the arrival of 93 new for-sale townhomes on a long-vacant big-box site is a straightforward improvement. The OSH building added nothing to the street since 2018. A mix of two- and three-bedroom homes with garages, landscaping, and permanent residents will.
Looking for New Construction in Buena Park?
Dale Townhomes is one of the most promising for-sale projects coming to North Orange County, but it is not the only one. Whether you are a first-time buyer, moving up, or investing, there are new construction opportunities in Buena Park and across OC right now. Reach out and we can walk you through what is available and what is coming.
