By Eric Engelbert
If you have driven through Laguna Niguel on the 5 or the 73, you have seen the Ziggurat. It is hard to miss. The massive stepped pyramid sits on a hillside at 24000 Avila Road, a million square feet on 92 acres, one of the most recognizable buildings in all of Orange County. For the last several years it has been sitting mostly empty, owned by the federal government and quietly deteriorating. In June 2026, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian closed on its purchase of the building for $207 million. Getting there was anything but straightforward. And what happens next matters not just for healthcare in South OC, but for the cost of that healthcare, and for the real estate around it.
What Is the Ziggurat?
The official name is the Chet Holifield Federal Building, named after a longtime California congressman. But nobody calls it that. The nickname comes from the ancient Mesopotamian stepped pyramid temples, and the resemblance is unmistakable. The building was designed by William Pereira, the same architect responsible for the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco and the original UC Irvine campus. It was completed in 1971 and originally housed thousands of federal employees.
Over the decades, federal tenant headcount shrank and the building was never efficiently utilized for its size. By the time the General Services Administration (GSA) listed it for sale, it was largely vacant, generating no revenue and accumulating repair costs. The GSA estimated that selling the property would save taxpayers more than $340 million in long-term repair and upgrade costs. The Trump administration pushed to sell off underused federal properties nationwide, and the Ziggurat was a prime candidate.
The Auction: 157 Bids, a Collusion Allegation, and a Deal That Fell Apart
The GSA put the building on the market with starting bids at $70 million in 2024. What followed was one of the more unusual bidding wars in Orange County real estate history. Over the course of roughly five months, two serious buyers submitted a combined 157 bids against each other: Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and a team made up of Jeff Pintar of San Juan Capistrano-based Pintar Investment Company and Cameron Hildreth of Hilco Development Services.
Pintar and Hilco were not medical operators. Their stated plan was a large-scale demolish-and-rebuild mixed-use project: residential, office, and retail buildings across the 92-acre site. Hildreth was direct about the building itself, telling the Business Journal "We're going to knock it down. It never served its purpose." They also told reporters they were open to having a hospital on the property "with the right partner." That last line becomes very relevant in a moment.
In October 2024, Pintar and Hilco won the auction at $177 million and put down a $17.7 million deposit, with the remaining balance due April 24, 2025. Then, according to Hoag, something went wrong. During the bidding process, Pintar allegedly approached Hoag and suggested they "work together instead of against each other" rather than continuing to compete. The implication, based on what Pintar had publicly said about their plans, appears to be that they wanted Hoag as the medical anchor tenant while Pintar built everything else around them. Hoag refused, reported the contact as a violation of GSA auction rules, and sued the GSA in November 2024.
On March 10, 2025, the GSA cancelled the $177 million deal with Pintar and Hilco entirely and awarded the property to Hoag instead. Hoag dismissed their lawsuit on March 20, the day after the award was confirmed. Hilco vowed to fight but could not prevent the transfer. The final purchase closed June 30, 2026 at $207 million, more than Pintar's winning bid, reflecting where Hoag had been bidding before being outbid in the auction.
Will the Ziggurat Be Preserved or Demolished?
One of the most common questions after the sale: is Hoag going to tear it down? The honest answer is that nobody outside of Hoag knows, and Hoag has not said. But the terms of the sale tell you something important.
When the GSA first auctioned the building in 2022 and 2023, the sale included a mandatory Conservation and Preservation Easement requiring the buyer to protect the building's historic character. That auction got zero bids. For the 2024 re-auction, GSA removed the easement requirement entirely. In its place, a $2 million mitigation fund was negotiated as a condition of sale. That fund is now with the Orange County Community Foundation and will be used for historic preservation efforts elsewhere in the county. It is compensation for the loss of the building's protection, not a guarantee of it.
Hoag's entity, Laguna Ridge Healthcare Development, LLC, confirmed to GSA before closing that it will not execute a Conservation and Preservation Easement for the property. The Ziggurat has no legal protection from demolition.
What GSA did require was documentation of the building's history. Griffin Enright Architects and Architectural Resources Group completed a HABS Level II architectural survey, producing archival-quality drawings and photographs. The original design drawings, the building's scale model, and the design charrette report are being transferred to the Laguna Niguel Historical Society. The building may not survive, but the record of it will.
Preserve Orange County and Docomomo-US, the organization dedicated to preserving mid-century modern architecture, both have the Chet Holifield Federal Building on their endangered lists. Docomomo still classifies the building as "Threatened." Hilco, the competing bidder, was blunt about their plans: "We're going to knock it down. It never served its purpose." Hoag has said nothing on the subject. Silence is not preservation.
Given Hoag's purpose for the site, a phased redevelopment is more likely than an outright demolition. The 92-acre site is large enough for a full campus rethink, and some portions of the existing structure may be repurposed while others are replaced with purpose-built medical facilities. But whatever Hoag ultimately announces, the iconic stepped pyramid silhouette that has defined the Laguna Niguel skyline since 1971 is not guaranteed to be part of it.
$207 Million Is Just the Beginning
The purchase price is the headline number, but it is not the full picture. Hoag is simultaneously spending $1 billion on expansions in Irvine and opened a new 20,000 square foot health center in San Clemente in mid-2025. The Ziggurat acquisition is the capstone of a very deliberate geographic strategy: Hoag has stated publicly that its goal is to have a healthcare facility within 10 minutes of every Orange County household.
To put the scale in perspective: this is a nonprofit hospital system spending over $1.2 billion on real estate and construction within a relatively short window, plus whatever it costs to retrofit or replace the Ziggurat itself for medical use. That $340 million in taxpayer savings the GSA cited reflects what the federal government would have spent maintaining the building. The actual cost of transforming a 1970s federal office pyramid into a functioning 21st-century medical campus will be its own significant number, and Hoag has not publicly detailed those plans yet.
Healthcare systems do not absorb those capital costs quietly. They pass them on through higher facility fees, elevated service charges, and contractual pressure on insurance carriers. This is one of the structural reasons healthcare costs in OC continue to rise, and the Ziggurat is a vivid example of the scale of investment now required to deliver modern medical care.
Why South OC Needs This
The Ziggurat purchase did not happen in a vacuum. South Orange County has had a shrinking healthcare footprint for years. MemorialCare closed its San Clemente hospital back in 2016, leaving a gap in the southernmost part of the county that has never been fully filled. Patients in South OC dealing with serious emergencies have had limited nearby options, often requiring longer transports to Hoag's Newport Beach campus, Providence Mission in Mission Viejo, or Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills.
Hoag and Providence have been in a quiet race to claim South OC. Providence Mission is investing $712 million in new South OC facilities. Hoag's combination of the San Clemente health center and now the Ziggurat site positions them to cover the corridor from the mid-county down to the southern tip. For residents of Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, San Juan Capistrano, and Dana Point, this competition could meaningfully improve access to care over the next several years.
The Laguna Beach ER: A Crisis That Makes the Ziggurat More Urgent
While Hoag is building out, another piece of the South OC healthcare picture is quietly collapsing. Providence Mission Hospital Laguna Beach, the small community hospital that has served coastal Laguna for decades, is facing an existential problem. The facility is nearly 70 years old and would need approximately $300 million in seismic retrofitting by 2030 to comply with California's mandatory earthquake safety standards, plus an estimated $50 million to replace aging plumbing and electrical systems. That is $350 million to bring a small community hospital up to code.
Providence has indicated it cannot justify that investment, and announced plans to close the emergency room and shift the Laguna Beach campus toward urgent care and outpatient services only. The ER currently handles roughly 17,000 visits per year. When surveyed, 88% of Laguna Beach residents said having a 24/7 emergency room was important to them. The city created an ad hoc committee and action plan in response, and as of mid-2026 the situation remains unresolved, though the direction is not encouraging for ER advocates.
It is also worth noting what the Laguna Beach facility could not do even before this crisis. Patients experiencing a stroke or heart attack were already being transported out, to Hoag in Newport Beach or to "Big Mission" in Mission Viejo, because the Laguna Beach campus simply was not equipped to handle those emergencies. The closure of the ER would eliminate even the stabilization function the facility currently provides.
This is exactly the kind of gap the Ziggurat site is positioned to address. A major Hoag medical campus at 24000 Avila Road in Laguna Niguel sits within reasonable distance of both the Laguna Beach coastal communities and the broader South OC corridor. Hoag has not announced specific services planned for the site, but the geography makes its strategic purpose clear.
What This Means for Your Medical Bills and Your Insurance
Here is the part that does not get enough attention. When a health system spends $207 million on land, $1 billion on construction, and hundreds of millions more retrofitting or replacing a 1970s pyramid, those costs do not disappear. They get built into the cost structure of every procedure, every ER visit, every lab draw, and every overnight stay at that facility for the next several decades.
Hospital facility fees, which are the charges layered on top of doctor fees simply for using the building, are one of the least-discussed drivers of rising healthcare costs in California. A new or substantially renovated campus commands premium facility fees that reflect the capital investment behind it. Insurance carriers negotiate rates with these systems, and when a dominant regional system like Hoag commands more geographic coverage and fewer competitors, their negotiating leverage increases. Premiums follow.
None of this is a criticism of Hoag's expansion. Orange County genuinely needs more healthcare capacity, and private investment is filling a void that California's regulatory and seismic environment has made increasingly expensive. But for homeowners, renters, employers, and families in OC, the Ziggurat purchase is a reminder that the healthcare market in this county is being reshaped in ways that will show up in your insurance statement long before they show up in a new building on Avila Road.
What It Means for Real Estate in the Area
A major medical campus is generally positive for surrounding property values, particularly for commercial real estate, medical office buildings, and multifamily housing. Healthcare workers, visiting patients, and medical support businesses all create consistent demand for nearby housing and services. The 92-acre Ziggurat site is large enough that Hoag's buildout will likely reshape the character of that stretch of Avila Road over the next decade.
For homeowners near the site in Laguna Niguel, the short-term picture involves construction activity and traffic adjustment, while the long-term picture is a well-funded anchor institution with stable employment driving neighborhood demand. Medical campuses do not close and move to Texas. They generate payroll and patient traffic for generations.
On the flip side, the ongoing uncertainty around the Laguna Beach hospital campus may create near-term softness in the immediate area around the Mission Hospital Laguna Beach site as the community and Providence work through what happens to that property. If the ER closes and the campus shifts to outpatient only, the land use questions around a 70-year-old hospital building in coastal Laguna Beach become interesting from a real estate standpoint. That is a situation worth watching closely.
If you are curious how these changes might affect your home's value or you are considering buying or selling in South OC, I am glad to talk through what the data looks like right now.
South OC Is Being Reshaped
The Ziggurat sale is one of the more consequential transactions in Orange County in recent memory, not just for healthcare but for the communities that surround it. The story is still developing, and the full scope of Hoag's plans for the site has not been announced. I will be following this closely and updating as more details become public.
