Hub Fullerton: Student Housing Replaces an Old Office Park on Chapman
By Eric Engelbert
At the northeast corner of Chapman and Commonwealth Avenues, right up against the 57 freeway and a seven-minute walk from Cal State Fullerton, a six-story student community called Hub Fullerton now stands where a dated office park used to be. It is one of the largest student-housing projects the city has seen, and the story of how it got built, including a public fight over parking, says a lot about how Fullerton is adding density near campus.
What Was There Before: The Vanguard Business Center
The 3.55-acre site at 2601, 2701, and 2751 E. Chapman Avenue was previously home to the Vanguard Business Center, a cluster of four two-story office buildings totaling roughly 35,000 square feet, wrapped by a surface parking lot. It was ordinary older office product, the kind of low-rise suburban commercial space that has struggled across Orange County as office demand softened.
In April 2022, the office property at 2601 to 2651 Chapman sold for $9.25 million. By the time it changed hands, the site had already been approved for a student housing development, which is a big part of why it commanded that price. Sitting directly across the street from an existing student community and within walking distance of CSUF, the land was worth far more as a housing site than as aging offices.
What Got Built: Hub Fullerton
The developer is Core Spaces, an Austin-based firm that specializes in student housing in major university markets, working with Amplify Development. The general contractor is Milender White, with DLR Group as architect and Curioso handling interiors. The community delivered in 2025 and is now leasing.
Hub Fullerton is a six-story mixed-use building with roughly 1,047 beds and ground-floor commercial space, sitting in the Education Focus Area of the Fullerton Plan. Beds are individually leased, which is standard for purpose-built student housing, and the amenity package is aimed squarely at students, with a rooftop pool, fitness and spa space, study and coworking areas, and secured access. The ground-floor retail is being marketed to restaurants and neighborhood-serving businesses that benefit from the built-in foot traffic of over a thousand residents plus the surrounding campus population.
The Parking Fight That Reshaped the Project
The most contentious part of the approval was parking, and it is a useful window into how these projects get negotiated. As originally proposed, the project was much larger, around 420 units and 1,251 beds, but it included only about 376 parking spaces. That was roughly 600 fewer spaces than Fullerton would normally require for a project of that size.
Reduced parking is not unusual for student housing near a campus, where many residents walk, bike, or use transit, and Fullerton's own code allows parking reductions in exchange for including affordable units at the low or very low income level. Even so, in November 2021 the City Council sent the project back to the Planning Commission over concerns that the parking was inadequate. The developer responded by expanding the footprint of the parking structure, which pushed the space count up to around 630 and trimmed the unit count. The revised project won unanimous approval in January 2022, and the community that ultimately opened landed near 1,047 beds.
Building Next to the 57 Freeway
Because the site sits directly beside the 57 freeway, freeway-adjacent air quality was a real issue during review. Residents and commenters raised concerns about traffic congestion at the Chapman entrance and about the health effects of placing housing so close to a major freeway, where vehicle emissions are a known concern.
Projects like this address that through building design and mechanical mitigation, including enhanced air filtration systems intended to reduce residents' exposure to freeway pollution. It is a reminder that infill sites, which are exactly the parcels cities want to redevelop for housing, often come with constraints that shape how the building has to be engineered.
What Hub Fullerton Means for the Local Market
Cal State Fullerton's more than 40,000 students generate year-round rental demand that the surrounding neighborhoods have absorbed for decades, often by converting single-family homes into de facto student rentals. A large purpose-built community like Hub Fullerton gives students a dedicated place to live and can relieve some of that pressure on nearby houses and apartments, which matters to owners and long-term renters in the area.
For investors, the project is another data point showing that student housing near CSUF is a strong enough market to justify replacing income-producing office buildings with new construction. Hub Fullerton is one of several major projects reshaping the city. For the full picture, see my Fullerton development guide, and read about the new for-sale homes at Pineridge and the apartment conversion at Atlas Fullerton.
Following New Developments in Fullerton?
From student housing near CSUF to new construction downtown, Fullerton's pipeline is moving fast. As a local Fullerton broker, I track how new supply affects rents, values, and opportunities across the city, whether you own near campus, want to invest, or are buying a home nearby.
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