By Eric Engelbert
A 15-acre industrial site on Sunflower Avenue just north of the 405 Freeway is about to become something Costa Mesa has not seen in a long time: a brand-new mixed-use neighborhood with nearly 957 apartment homes, resort-style amenities, 6,000 square feet of retail, and the first new public park the city has added in over 20 years. The project is called One Metro West, and it has been in the works since 2019. It has cleared multiple approval hurdles, survived a heated community debate over density and voting rights, and had its design modified as recently as May 2026. A groundbreaking has not been officially announced as of this writing, but with final approvals now in place and a 2028 opening target, the development team appears to be close. Here is the full story and what it means if you are living in, buying in, or renting in central Orange County.
What Was There Before: A Warehouse Next to a Freeway
The 1683 Sunflower Avenue site has spent decades as industrial land. A 345,000-square-foot warehouse building currently sits on the property, partly occupied by Robinson Pharma, a contract pharmaceutical manufacturer. The 405 Freeway runs directly adjacent to the south, which adds noise and air quality considerations any residential developer would need to engineer around. On its eastern edge, the site sits just west of SoCo (South Coast Collection), the high-end design and dining district on Hyland Avenue known for its furniture showrooms and a food hall that includes some of Orange County's best restaurants. That walkable proximity to SoCo gives One Metro West a retail and lifestyle context that most apartment communities near freeways cannot claim.
What makes the site particularly compelling is its employment context. Anduril Industries, the defense technology company, has operated its headquarters just down Sunflower at 1400 Anduril (on the corner of Harbor Boulevard and Sunflower, in the former Los Angeles Times printing plant known as "The Press") since 2021. The campus spans 634,000 square feet across five buildings and is fully leased with 13 years remaining on Anduril's lease. The workforce is already there and already needs housing. Combined with the roughly 5,000 other employees working in the north Costa Mesa corridor, the demand for well-located rental housing near this site is established, not speculative.
Who Is Behind One Metro West?
The project is a joint venture between two well-established developers: Beverly Hills-based Rose Equities and San Diego-based Garden Communities CA. Rose Equities is a family-owned company that has been building owner-operated communities since 1949. Their portfolio spans Southern California and extends into markets like New York, where they paid $71 million for a former hotel site in Westchester County with plans for a 760-unit apartment complex. Rose Equities is also partnering with Garden Communities on a 272-unit project in Torrance. They are not a one-project developer, and they are not new to Orange County, holding membership in both the Newport Beach and Costa Mesa Chambers of Commerce.
Garden Communities CA is the operating partner with direct Orange County experience. They currently run two luxury apartment communities in Irvine: Volar Apartments at 1100 Volar near John Wayne Airport, and Metropolis, a contemporary community featuring a private bowling alley, rooftop pool, and high-end finishes. They also have a third Irvine project in the pipeline: Trilogy Gardens, a 876-unit, three-building community approved by the City of Irvine in the Irvine Business Complex. Garden Communities positions itself at the luxury end of the multifamily market, and their Irvine properties give a clear preview of the product quality and price point One Metro West will likely target.
The architect is AC Martin, a Los Angeles firm with roots going back to 1906. Their Orange County work includes the Garden Grove Civic Center Revitalization, which houses the Garden Grove Police Department. They are a serious institutional firm, not a trendy boutique. The building design for One Metro West is described as "timeless" with clean lines, natural materials, and a strong emphasis on the interplay between indoor and outdoor living, rooftop terraces, and social gathering spaces at multiple levels.
957 Apartments, Three Towers, and the First New Park in Costa Mesa in Over 20 Years
One Metro West will rise across three six- and seven-story buildings on a 15.23-acre site. The current approved plan calls for 957 total units, reduced from the original 1,057 following a project modification approved by the City on May 29, 2026. Of those, 106 units are designated affordable housing for households earning at the very low and low income levels, which the City has defined as annual household incomes of approximately $34,274 and $54,840. The remaining units are market-rate rentals.
The amenity package is the clearest signal of where Garden Communities is positioning this community in the market. Plans include an Equinox-style 24/7 fitness center, yoga and aerobics studio, a wellness room with oxygen stations and cryotherapy, and three resort-style saltwater swimming pools, one of which is a rooftop junior Olympic-sized pool. Multiple rooftop terraces are designed for both lounging and organized events. The 42,000-square-foot amenity and co-working building (modified from the original creative office concept) gives residents flexible workspace options on site. Unit sizes range from studios to larger multi-bedroom configurations across all three buildings.
The crown jewel of the public-facing portion of the project is a 1.7-acre park and event plaza, the first new park added to Costa Mesa in more than 20 years. The park is designed to host live music, outdoor performances, community events, and everyday recreation. A 6,000-square-foot specialty retail component will activate the street level. This combination of public park, retail, and community space is intentional: Rose Equities has framed One Metro West as a neighborhood asset for all of Costa Mesa, not just a residential complex for its tenants.
Five Years from Proposal to Groundbreaking: The Long Road to One Metro West
One Metro West has been navigating the approval process since 2019. The Costa Mesa City Council gave initial approval to the project on June 16, 2021. At that point, the development was expected to break ground in July 2022 and be fully complete by January 2026. Neither of those dates materialized.
The delays stemmed from a combination of legal challenges, regulatory hurdles, and a significant fight over whether Costa Mesa voters had the right to weigh in on the project. By mid-2024, reporting suggested construction would begin in 2025. As of early 2026, the project underwent a formal modification through California's CEQA environmental review process, reducing the unit count to 957 and converting the office component to a resident amenity and co-working building. That modified project received final CEQA approval on May 29, 2026. A groundbreaking has not been publicly announced as of this writing, but the modified approval clears the last major regulatory hurdle. With a 2028 target for the first residents to move in, construction would need to begin in the second half of 2026 to stay on schedule, given the three-year phased build-out timeline the developer has described.
The City of Costa Mesa estimates One Metro West will generate $350 million in economic impact and bring approximately 1,800 permanent jobs to the city. The community benefits package associated with the project is valued at roughly $68 million, nearly four times the city's annual capital budget. Development fees total approximately $6 million.
The Fight Over Density and the Right to Vote
One Metro West generated real community opposition. A group called "We Are Costa Mesa" organized against the project, circulating a petition and arguing that a seven-story, 1,050-plus-unit complex was too dense for the area, would strain city services, worsen traffic, and alter the character of the state streets neighborhood nearby. Those are legitimate concerns worth naming honestly in any discussion of the project.
The deeper grievance was procedural. Costa Mesa has a voter protection measure called Measure Y, enacted in 2016, which requires large-scale developments that exceed certain zoning thresholds to go before the city's voters for approval. When the City Council approved One Metro West in June 2021, that vote requirement was still technically in place. Then Measure K passed in 2022. Measure K exempted housing developments on commercially and industrially zoned land from the Measure Y voter approval requirement, specifically to comply with state housing laws that restrict cities from blocking housing through local ballot requirements. The Council used Measure K to re-approve One Metro West without a public vote. Opponents argued that Measure K stripped residents of their right to weigh in on the most significant development in their neighborhood in decades.
The opposition never gathered significant organized traction, and the approvals have held. The May 2026 project modification, which reduced the total unit count by 100 units and shifted the office component to resident amenity space, was at least partly responsive to feedback about the scale and programming of the development. Whether the reduction from 1,057 to 957 units meaningfully addresses the density concerns that drove the opposition is a matter of perspective.
What Will It Cost to Live There?
No pricing has been officially released. The project is not expected to welcome its first residents until 2028, and Garden Communities typically does not set rents until closer to lease-up. What we can do is look at the signals the project is sending and compare them to the current market.
When One Metro West was first presented to the public back in 2019, the developer estimated that studios would start at roughly $2,600 to $2,700 per month if they were leasing at that time. Since then, Costa Mesa rents have moved. Current 2026 market averages are approximately $2,130 for a studio, $2,599 for a one-bedroom, $3,181 for a two-bedroom, and $3,569 for a three-bedroom, according to RentCafe data.
The amenity package at One Metro West, rooftop pools, cryotherapy, Equinox-style fitness, co-working, resort-style pools, and event terraces, is firmly in the luxury tier. Garden Communities' existing Irvine properties Volar and Metropolis are high-end communities in a market where rents are already above Costa Mesa averages. Based on the comparable luxury positioning and the two-year period between now and opening, expect One Metro West to price above current Costa Mesa market averages, likely in the range of $2,500 to $3,000 for studios and $3,000 to $3,500 or higher for one-bedrooms at opening, depending on floor, view, and which building phase they are in.
The 106 affordable units will be priced below market for qualifying households. If you or someone you know earns in the $34,000 to $55,000 range annually and is interested in the affordable component, it will be worth monitoring the developer's waitlist process as the opening approaches.
What This Means for Central OC Buyers and Renters
For renters, One Metro West adds nearly 1,000 new units to a central OC market that has been supply-constrained for years. More supply, even at the luxury end, tends to put some downward pressure on asking rents across the submarket as existing properties compete for residents. The addition of a large workforce-adjacent community near Anduril and the rest of the north Costa Mesa employment corridor will also absorb demand that currently disperses into Irvine, Santa Ana, and the surrounding cities. That is a subtle but real benefit for renters looking anywhere in the 405 corridor.
For buyers, the development of a new mixed-use neighborhood on previously industrial land is generally a positive signal for surrounding property values over time. A well-designed community with a public park, retail, and a major employer footprint next door tends to stabilize and improve the desirability of the surrounding area. Costa Mesa has long been one of the better-value cities in Orange County for buyers who want proximity to Newport Beach and the coast without paying Newport Beach prices. That positioning is unlikely to change, and projects like One Metro West reinforce the narrative that Costa Mesa is actively investing in its future.
If you are considering buying or renting in Costa Mesa or the central OC corridor, the current market offers more time and negotiating room than buyers have had in several years. Homes are sitting longer, and sellers are more willing to negotiate on price and terms than they were in 2021 or 2022.
One Metro West Is Worth Watching
A project this size does not come together often in a built-out city like Costa Mesa. The developers have a strong Orange County track record, the architect has institutional credibility, and the location next to a growing tech and defense employment hub makes the demand case real. Whether you are a renter tracking your next apartment, a buyer watching neighborhood trends, or a homeowner curious about what a major new development means for your area, One Metro West is a story worth following as it moves from approvals toward groundbreaking.
