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July 8, 2026

Irvine Business Complex: How an Office Park Became Orange County's Next Housing Frontier

By Eric Engelbert

An Office Park Is Becoming a Neighborhood

The Irvine Business Complex sits on the western edge of Irvine, tucked between the 405 Freeway, the 55 Freeway, San Diego Creek, and the boundary with Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. For decades it was a collection of low-rise office buildings, warehouses, and industrial parks that most Irvine residents drove past without much thought. That is changing fast.

The City of Irvine has rezoned the IBC to allow up to 15,000 new homes, making it the second-largest housing growth area in the city's updated General Plan. Developers have taken notice. Projects are being submitted, approved, and in some cases already torn down and rebuilt. The transformation of the Irvine Business Complex is one of the largest and least-discussed housing stories in Orange County.

Where the IBC Came From

The Irvine Business Complex was not always called that. When the Irvine Company and architect William Pereira mapped out the city in the late 1960s alongside the UC Irvine campus, they designated the western edge as an industrial district called the Irvine Industrial Complex West. Warehouses, light manufacturing, and corporate campuses filled the area through the 1970s.

As the technology economy grew in the 1980s and 1990s, manufacturing faded and office parks took over. The area rebranded as the Irvine Business Complex. By 2000 it was a dense employment hub home to dozens of regional headquarters, medical offices, and tech firms clustered around John Wayne Airport.

Then the housing math changed. Irvine's home prices climbed. State mandates required cities to plan for more units. And suddenly those aging office buildings sitting on flat, well-located, freeway-adjacent land looked like something else entirely to developers and investors.

In 1992 the city first allowed residential uses in the IBC, capping it at 3,896 units. The General Plan update raised that cap to 15,000 units. As of mid-2026, about 12,341 units already exist in the IBC, 2,010 more are under construction, and 1,468 have been approved and are waiting to break ground.

What the IBC Looks Like Today

The IBC covers roughly 2,700 acres. It runs along the western city limit from Campus Drive in the south up to the city boundary near the 405/55 interchange. The San Joaquin Marsh and San Diego Creek form a natural eastern border, separating the IBC from the rest of Irvine. The 405 bisects the district, and John Wayne Airport sits just to the south.

What makes the IBC attractive to developers is not just the land. It is the location. Residents would live within a short drive of every major employment center in Orange County, with freeway access in multiple directions, transit options expanding, and retail and services already nearby. The city has also required minimum densities of 50 dwelling units per acre for new residential projects in the IBC, pushing development vertical rather than horizontal.

Every large project in the IBC must include at least 15% affordable housing under Irvine's inclusionary zoning policy, adopted in 2003. That means thousands of below-market units will be built alongside the market-rate homes as the district fills in.

Spotlight: Lennar and the Von Karman Campus

The single biggest story in the IBC right now sits at the northwest corner of Alton Parkway and Von Karman Avenue, where a 25-acre office campus built in 1988 is being demolished and rebuilt as 426 new homes. The design aesthetic in the architectural renderings is farmhouse-inspired, a deliberate contrast to the commercial character of the surrounding area. No architect of record has been publicly named as of this writing.

The story behind this project is almost as interesting as the project itself. The campus, which IRA Capital branded the Von Karman Creative Campus, was originally sold by EQ Office, a Chicago unit of New York-based Blackstone. IRA Capital, an Irvine-based private equity firm co-founded by Mohannad Malas and Amer F. Kasm in 2010, purchased it in 2023 alongside Boston-based Foxfield as a 50-50 partner for $102.4 million. At the time, Kasm was direct about the play: "The value of this property is in the land."

What followed was a pivot from initial industrial redevelopment plans to housing, pushed along in part by the city of Irvine as it faced mounting state housing mandates. The city conditionally offered to buy the site for more than $300 million as a backstop if residential development failed to materialize, a backstop that helped ensure a housing outcome. IRA secured full residential entitlements from the Irvine Planning Commission in the third quarter of 2025 and also paid the city $6.7 million in community park in-lieu fees and $7.2 million in affordable housing in-lieu fees as part of the approval.

In January 2026, IRA and Foxfield sold to a joint venture of TPG Angelo Gordon and Essential Housing Asset Management, an affiliate of Miami-based homebuilder Lennar, for $232.1 million, more than double what they paid three years earlier. TPG Angelo Gordon manages more than $220 billion in assets after TPG acquired Angelo Gordon in 2023 for $2.7 billion. Lennar, led by CEO Stuart Miller, is one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. Demolition began almost immediately after closing.

Von Karman: The Full Money Trail

• Address: 16775 Von Karman Avenue, Irvine

• Site size: 25.4 acres | 433,000 sq ft of office (9 buildings, built 1988)

• 2023 sale: Blackstone (via EQ Office) sold to IRA Capital + Foxfield for $102.4 million

• City in-lieu fees paid: $6.7M (parks) + $7.2M (affordable housing)

• Entitlements approved: Q3 2025, Irvine Planning Commission

• 2026 sale: IRA Capital + Foxfield sold to TPG Angelo Gordon + Lennar for $232.1 million ($536/sq ft | $9.1M/acre)

• Units: 426 for-sale homes (detached, duets, townhomes, stacked flats)

• Architecture: Farmhouse-inspired design aesthetic

• Estimated unit prices: $1.2 million to $1.55 million per unit

• Estimated total sellout: $500 million to $660 million

• Status: Demolition underway; construction imminent as of mid-2026

Who Are the Players?

IRA Capital was founded in 2010 by Mohannad Malas and Amer F. Kasm and is headquartered in Irvine at 3121 Michelson Drive. The firm has acquired over 7 million square feet of property across 30 states, valued at more than $4 billion. Though primarily known for healthcare and medical real estate, the Von Karman play showed the firm's ability to identify and execute a high-value land conversion. IRA walked away from the sale having more than doubled its money in three years.

Foxfield is a Boston-based real estate firm that partnered with IRA Capital as a 50-50 co-owner of the Von Karman campus. Foxfield has not been widely quoted in coverage of the project but confirmed the sale details alongside IRA.

TPG Angelo Gordon is one of the largest alternative investment firms in the world. Angelo Gordon was acquired by TPG in a $2.7 billion cash and equity transaction in 2023. The combined organization manages more than $220 billion in assets, with significant exposure to real estate debt and equity strategies. Their Essential Housing Fund III is specifically structured to remove raw land from homebuilder balance sheets, positioning Lennar to build without carrying land on its books.

Lennar is one of the largest homebuilders in the United States, headquartered in Miami and led by CEO Stuart Miller. Lennar builds tens of thousands of homes per year across the country and has a substantial Orange County presence. Their involvement as the builder on this project means construction timelines will likely be executed efficiently once demolition is complete.

Other Active Projects in the IBC

The Von Karman project is the largest and most advanced, but it is not the only one. The Martin Street Residential Project proposes demolishing 78,800 square feet of existing industrial buildings on a 3.72-acre site and replacing them with 170 multi-family apartments. It is one of several smaller infill projects threading between the existing office and industrial uses as the district gradually shifts.

The city's development map shows a pipeline of projects at various stages, from early application through construction. Taken together, they represent the IBC slowly but systematically converting from a place you go to work to a place where people live, work, shop, and spend time.

What This Means for the Irvine Real Estate Market

The IBC buildout will add meaningful supply to the Irvine market over the next decade. That matters because Irvine has consistently been one of the most supply-constrained cities in Orange County despite its size. New for-sale product in the IBC, particularly at price points below the luxury tier, could give buyers options they have not had in years.

The location also changes the calculus for buyers who work in the area. Living in the IBC puts you within a short commute of John Wayne Airport, South Coast Plaza, Newport Center, and the major office corridors along Jamboree and MacArthur. For buyers who currently live in Irvine and commute to those areas, or who commute into Irvine from elsewhere, IBC housing is worth watching closely.

The city has argued, persuasively, that building housing near jobs actually reduces traffic rather than increasing it. People who live close to where they work drive fewer miles. For a city bisected by one of the most congested freeways in California, that argument carries real weight.

How the Price More Than Doubled in Three Years

When IRA Capital and Foxfield bought the Von Karman campus in 2023 for $102.4 million, they were not paying for an office building. They were paying for what the land could become. Amer Kasm said it plainly at the time: "The value of this property is in the land."

What followed was a strategy known in the industry as entitlement arbitrage. The physical land did not change. What changed was its legal use. Over 36 months, IRA and Foxfield did three things: they de-tenanted all nine office buildings, repositioned the property, and ran the full city entitlement process to convert the zoning from commercial office to residential. In the third quarter of 2025, the Irvine Planning Commission approved a Master Plan, Park Plan, and Vesting Tentative Tract Map for 426 for-sale homes. At that moment, the land stopped being worth what vacant post-pandemic office space is worth and started being worth what a fully approved, shovel-ready residential development in one of the most desirable cities in California is worth.

The math is not complicated. At $1.2 million to $1.55 million per unit and 426 units, the finished homes represent $500 million to $660 million in gross revenue for Lennar. A builder will pay a premium to acquire a site where all the government approval risk has already been taken out of the deal. That premium is the reward for the three years IRA spent navigating the planning process.

The city of Irvine even confirmed this value implicitly. Officials conditionally offered to buy the site themselves for more than $300 million as a backstop if housing development fell through. That offer essentially put a floor on the value and signaled to the market exactly what entitled residential land in Irvine was worth. IRA and Foxfield's $130 million profit, before taxes and fees, was earned by doing the entitlement work that transformed the land's permitted use. It is a legitimate business model and in this case executed efficiently.

What This Means for Irvine's Tax Base

The fiscal picture for Irvine is genuinely positive, with one notable nuance worth understanding.

The upfront financial benefit to the city is already locked in. IRA Capital paid Irvine $6.7 million in community park in-lieu fees and $7.2 million in affordable housing in-lieu fees as part of the entitlement approval. That is $13.9 million deposited into city funds before a single home is built.

On an ongoing basis, the 426 homes will generate property tax assessed at their purchase prices. At $1.2 million to $1.55 million per unit, the total assessed value of the community at full sellout could reach $575 million or more. Under California's Proposition 13, that generates a base property tax of roughly $5.75 million per year from the development, before any Mello-Roos or special district assessments that newer Irvine developments typically carry, which can push effective rates above 1.4 percent.

Here is the nuance: Irvine receives one of the lowest shares of property tax revenue of any city in Orange County. Cities like Newport Beach (17.2%), Santa Ana (16.9%), and Huntington Beach (15.4%) capture far more of the property tax dollar than Irvine does. This goes back to the terms of Irvine's 1971 incorporation and the influence of the Irvine Company in shaping how tax revenue was allocated. The city makes up for it through sales tax, hotel occupancy tax, and development fees, which together account for the bulk of locally generated revenue.

Even with a modest property tax share, the ongoing revenue from 426 new households, combined with the $13.9 million in upfront fees, the sales tax generated by those residents spending locally, and the broader increase in property values across the IBC as the district improves, makes this development a meaningful fiscal win for the city. Irvine has spent years trying to attract exactly this kind of dense, high-value residential development to the IBC, and the Von Karman project is the largest and most advanced example of that strategy working.

The Numbers Behind the Transformation

Here is where the Irvine Business Complex stands heading into the second half of 2026:

Category Units
Existing residential units in IBC 12,341
Units currently under construction 2,010
Units approved, not yet built 1,468
Total General Plan capacity 15,000
Remaining capacity to be built ~1,181+

Source: City of Irvine Community Development Department. Figures are approximate as of mid-2026.

The IBC is just one part of the development wave reshaping Orange County. See every major project, city by city, on the New Developments in Orange County page.

Explore Homes for Sale in Irvine

If you are watching the IBC or considering a move to Irvine or nearby cities, explore current listings here:

  1. Irvine: Homes for Sale in Irvine, CA
  2. Costa Mesa: Homes for Sale in Costa Mesa, CA
  3. Newport Beach: Homes for Sale in Newport Beach, CA
  4. New Construction Homes for Sale in Irvine
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July 8, 2026

Newport Village on Mariners' Mile: The Moshayedi Family's 15-Year Bet on Newport Beach's Waterfront

By Eric Engelbert

The Longest Bet on Mariners' Mile

Most people know Mariners' Mile as the stretch of West Coast Highway between Dover Drive and Newport Boulevard where Newport Harbor opens up to view and a string of restaurants, boat dealers, and marine businesses have occupied the waterfront for decades. It is one of the most recognizable commercial corridors in coastal Orange County and, for much of the past 15 years, one of the most quietly contested.

While most of the development conversation in Newport Beach has centered on Newport Center and the Airport Area, a pair of brothers who made their fortune in computer storage technology have been slowly, methodically, and expensively assembling one of the largest private land positions in the history of Mariners' Mile.

Manouch and Mark Moshayedi, co-founders of STEC Inc. and Newport Beach residents, have spent more than $130 million since 2009 buying up properties on both sides of West Coast Highway in this corridor. Their plan is called Newport Village. It has been through multiple versions, one withdrawn application, sustained community opposition, and years of environmental review.

It is not built yet. But it remains the most ambitious development proposal Mariners' Mile has ever seen, and the EIR process that will determine its fate is now well underway.

From STEC to Real Estate: The Moshayedi Family Story

The backstory of Newport Village begins not on the water but in Silicon Valley. Manouch Moshayedi and his brother Mark co-founded STEC Inc., a Santa Ana-based maker of solid-state storage devices, and built it into a publicly traded company that supplied enterprise-grade flash storage to major data center operators. The company rode the early wave of the enterprise SSD market before facing competitive pressure from larger players.

In 2013, Western Digital Corporation acquired STEC for $340 million. With liquidity from the sale, the brothers pivoted to what Manouch described as "one-of-a-kind properties" in their home community of Newport Beach.

The target was Mariners' Mile. Beginning as early as 2009 and accelerating through the mid-2010s, MX3 Ventures (Manouch's firm) and MSM Global Ventures (Mark's firm) acquired a multiblock stretch of properties on both the waterfront side of Coast Highway and the inland side. By 2017 they had assembled more than $130 million in Mariners' Mile real estate across entities, making them among the largest privately held commercial real estate owners in Orange County.

A third brother, Mike Moshayedi, also has prior ties to STEC and connections to the family's real estate interests. The family has been described as deeply rooted in the Newport Beach community, which gives the Newport Village proposal a local-owner dimension that distinguishes it from out-of-market developers bringing capital to Newport Beach for the first time.

A key moment in the land assembly came in 2015, when Don Haskell, a long-influential owner of several Mariners' Mile parcels, passed away. In 2016, Moshayedi acquired properties that had housed Ardell Yacht and Ship Brokers, Silver Seas Yachts, and Sun Country Marine, filling in critical gaps in the portfolio.

What Newport Village Proposes

The current version of Newport Village (application PA2022-0166, filed August 2022) is a substantially more modest project than what the Moshayedis originally envisioned. The first 2017 proposal called for nearly 600,000 square feet of development, including 175 residential units, 240,000 square feet of commercial space, a new 77-slip marina, and 694 underground parking spaces. That version drew immediate opposition and went through multiple revisions before being withdrawn entirely in March 2022.

The resubmitted plan is calibrated to fit within the existing Newport Beach General Plan without requiring a public vote under the city's charter provisions. Community Development Director Seimone Jurjis confirmed in 2017 that the project, as structured, does not trigger a citywide vote. That calculation holds for the current version.

The project sits on 9.4 acres spanning both north and south sides of West Coast Highway in the 2000 and 2200 blocks. It is divided between two distinct parcels.

The north parcel, on the inland side of PCH between the former Holiday Inn and Novamar Insurance, will be developed with 181 rental apartment units arranged in a pedestrian-oriented village setting with tree shade, retail, and restaurant space at the ground level.

The south parcel, on the waterfront side of PCH between A'maree's and the German School campus, will contain 17 for-sale condominium units along with retail and restaurant space and a three-story parking structure. The A'maree's building at 2241 West Coast Highway and the office building at 2244 West Coast Highway are both being retained; other structures on the site will be demolished.

A new publicly accessible waterfront boardwalk and plaza ties the south parcel together and represents one of the project's most significant public benefits: open access to Newport Harbor along a stretch that has historically been occupied by private marine businesses.

Component Detail
Total site 9.4 acres at 2000-2244 W. Coast Highway, both sides of PCH
Developers MX3 Ventures (Manouch Moshayedi) + MSM Global Ventures (Mark Moshayedi)
Architect BAR Architects & Interiors
Apartments (north parcel) 181 rental units, including 9 affordable to very-low-income households
Condominiums (south parcel) 17 for-sale waterfront condominiums
Total commercial 63,285 sq ft: 20,310 office + 20,690 retail + 22,285 restaurant
Parking 848 spaces (surface, structured, subterranean)
Max height 35 feet (both parcels)
Public benefit New publicly accessible waterfront boardwalk and plaza; existing bulkheads reinforced and capped
Retained structures A'maree's building (2241 WCH) and office building (2244 WCH)
Density bonus 20% density bonus requested in exchange for 9 very-low-income units

A Decade of Revisions and Resistance

Newport Village has been one of the most persistently contested development proposals in Newport Beach's recent history. The resistance is not about the project being speculative or underfunded. It is about location.

Mariners' Mile sits at the base of the bluffs along Cliff Drive and Kings Road. The homes on those streets, many of which have enjoyed unobstructed views of Newport Harbor for decades, sit directly uphill from the project site. Any development that rises above existing structures on the waterfront threatens the view corridors that these properties have been valued on for generations.

At a November 2019 community meeting where Manouch Moshayedi unveiled a revised design, the reception was described by the Newport Beach Independent as an "icy" cold shoulder. One homeowner asked the developer's attorney Sean Matsler directly whether residents would be compensated for depressed property values if they lost views their homes had enjoyed for more than 50 years. The answer, diplomatically, was no.

"It's a very substantial project that will have a very dramatic impact on what Mariners' Mile will become," Bayshores resident Patrick Gormley said at that meeting, striking a more measured tone. "This is the most significant portion of land that is being considered for development along Mariners' Mile."

The "Protect Mariners' Mile" coalition has been organized in opposition throughout the project's lifespan, tracking city council actions, publicizing EIR timelines, and mobilizing community members to submit comments.

Moshayedi has not been without a response to critics. At the 2019 meeting he pointed out that under California's density bonus law, he could build up to 50 feet if he maximized affordable unit inclusion. At 35 feet, he argued, the project is the most restrained version the market-rate math allows. "If we did that," he said, referring to the taller option, "you would be crying, you would be shouting and these buildings would be in front of your living rooms."

Year Event
2009-2017 Moshayedi family assembles Mariners' Mile properties; total investment exceeds $130M
2015 Don Haskell, influential Mariners' Mile property owner, passes away
2016 Moshayedi acquires Ardell Yacht, Silver Seas Yachts, Sun Country Marine properties; application initialized
December 2017 First plans filed with city: ~600,000 sq ft, 175 units, 77-slip marina, $130M+ development
November 2019 Revised 299,500 sq ft design presented; community gives "cold shoulder"; Protect Mariners' Mile coalition active
March 2022 Original application (PA2017-253) withdrawn; new Preliminary Application filed same month
August 2022 Revised entitlement application (PA2022-0166) filed: 198 units, 63,285 sq ft commercial, 9.4 acres
November 2022 City Council authorizes EIR Professional Services Agreement; Psomas retained as EIR consultant
October 2023 EIR Notice of Preparation issued; public scoping meeting held October 25, 2023
2024-2025 Draft EIR anticipated Spring/Summer 2024; Planning Commission hearings anticipated 2024

The Approvals This Project Needs

Newport Village carries one of the longest approval checklists of any project in Newport Beach's current development pipeline. This is partly a function of its location in the Coastal Zone and partly a function of its complexity as a mixed-use project spanning both sides of a state highway.

The project requires a Major Site Development Review to allow the scope of the project and the 35-foot building height (above the base 26/31-foot limit). It needs a Tentative Tract Map to merge the underlying parcels and create 17 saleable condominium units. A Traffic Study under Newport Beach's Traffic Phasing Ordinance is required, with coordination with Caltrans for any improvements to PCH right-of-way. A Coastal Development Permit is required from the city, and an Approval in Concept must then go to the California Coastal Commission for the bulkhead improvements and partial marina redesign.

The project also requires a Conditional Use Permit for the parking management plan and a formal Affordable Housing Implementation Plan to document the 9 income-restricted units and the density bonus structure. And the EIR itself must address roughly a dozen technical studies including geotechnical, hydrology, marine biology, noise, view simulation, and historic resources.

Three waivers are also being requested: a waiver of the minimum commercial floor area ratio requirement, a waiver to reduce the private open-space requirement on the north parcel, and removal of the 100-foot residential setback from PCH on the north parcel (needed to make the parking and housing configuration work on a compact site).

Senior Planner Liz Westmoreland has been the city contact throughout the project's review process. The EIR consultant is Psomas, retained by the city via a Council-authorized agreement in November 2022.

Two Newport Beach Council members have potential conflicts that could limit their participation in any vote on the project. Councilman Duffy Duffield's companies operate the Duffy Electric Boat Company at 2001 West Coast Highway and a service yard at 2439 West Coast Highway, both within the project area. Councilman Brad Avery has ties to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship at 1801 West Coast Highway, though the city attorney's office has analyzed the conflict question separately for each.

What Mariners' Mile Could Become

The debate over Newport Village is, at its core, a debate about what Mariners' Mile should be.

For most of its history the corridor has been an eclectic mix of marine businesses, boat dealers, restaurants, and offices. It has never been planned or designed as a coherent district. The city has periodically attempted to develop a Mariners' Mile Revitalization Master Plan, but those efforts have not produced adopted standards that would define the corridor's future in detail.

Newport Village represents one possible answer: a mixed-use waterfront neighborhood with retail, dining, a public boardwalk, and residential units that would bring density and foot traffic to a corridor that has operated primarily as a drive-through destination. The public boardwalk component in particular has drawn some support even from those skeptical of the project's residential scale, because it would open waterfront access that has been essentially privatized for decades.

The opposing view, held by the Cliff Drive and Kings Road homeowners who would look down at the rooftops of the new buildings, is that Newport Village at 35 feet changes the fundamental character of the view corridor in a way that cannot be undone. Once those buildings are built, the harbor views from those residential streets are gone.

Moshayedi's position is that the land is his to develop, and that the current uses, a collection of aging marine businesses on underutilized parcels, are not a permanent condition just because they have existed long enough to feel like one. "Everyone has the right to build something on their property," he said at the 2019 meeting. "If I build a one-story building it's going to be in someone's view."

The tension between those two positions, the developer's property rights and the neighbors' invested view expectations, is exactly the kind of conflict that Newport Beach's entitlement process is designed to adjudicate slowly and carefully. It is why Newport Village, filed in various forms since 2016, was still working through the EIR process nearly a decade after the first application.

Property Tax and Economic Impact

If Newport Village is ultimately approved and built, its financial impact on Newport Beach would be meaningful across several categories.

The Moshayedi family's existing land holdings along Mariners' Mile are already generating property tax revenue based on their assembled purchase prices totaling more than $130 million. When the project is developed, those assessed values would be updated to reflect any new construction, and the 17 for-sale condominium units on the south parcel would be individually assessed at their sale prices, generating ongoing property tax revenue for the city each time a unit changes hands.

The 181 rental apartment units, if retained in the Moshayedi portfolio, would be assessed as a portfolio asset. Newport Beach waterfront rental units at this location would likely command premium rents. At market rents of $4,000 to $7,000 per month for units in a new waterfront community on PCH, the annual rental income from the apartment component alone could approach $10 to $15 million.

The 63,285 square feet of commercial space, divided among office, retail, and restaurant, would add a new commercial tax base in a corridor where retail sales tax is currently modest. A new restaurant cluster with waterfront promenade access, drawing from both the residential base and the existing Newport Harbor visitor traffic, could generate meaningful new sales tax for the city as well.

The waterfront boardwalk, while not directly revenue-producing for the city, represents a public amenity investment that could enhance property values for surrounding real estate, including residential properties on the harbor side.

Affordable Housing and AMI

Newport Village includes 9 income-restricted units out of 181 rental apartments, all designated for very-low-income households. These 9 units are the basis for the project's 20 percent density bonus request under California housing law, which allows developers to build at higher densities when affordable units are included.

Newport Beach uses Orange County Area Median Income for affordability calculations, not city-level or statewide figures. Orange County's 2025 AMI for a family of four was $169,200. Very-low-income households are those earning at or below 50 percent of AMI, or approximately $84,600 for a family of four. A two-bedroom unit at 50 percent AMI would be rent-capped at approximately $1,903 per month.

Nine units at those rent levels represent a genuine but modest affordable contribution from a 198-unit project. The remaining 189 units, both the 172 market-rate apartments and the 17 for-sale condos, will be priced at Newport Beach waterfront market rates.

For context, market-rate one-bedroom apartments in new waterfront construction in Newport Beach have been asking $3,500 to $5,500 per month. The 17 waterfront condominiums on the south parcel, with harbor views and direct boardwalk access, could be priced significantly higher, possibly in the $2 million to $5 million range given the site's location and scarcity.

Where Things Stand

As of mid-2026, Newport Village remains in the environmental review and entitlement process. The EIR Notice of Preparation was issued in October 2023. The draft EIR, which was anticipated for Spring/Summer 2024, would trigger a formal public comment period before a final EIR can be certified. Planning Commission hearings on the project were anticipated for late 2024 and into 2025.

Even after Planning Commission action, the project would likely require City Council review and then California Coastal Commission sign-off on the Coastal Development Permit and bulkhead changes before any construction could begin. Given the project's complexity and the organized opposition, the Coastal Commission process is expected to be contentious in its own right.

The Moshayedi family has now been pursuing this project in various forms for nearly a decade. That persistence is not simply stubbornness. The family owns the land outright, carries no immediate pressure to sell, and continues to generate income from existing tenants on the assembled parcels. They can afford to wait out the process in a way that a developer carrying acquisition debt cannot.

"The area is a good long-term investment," Manouch Moshayedi said years ago. "These are one-of-a-kind properties." On that point, almost no one disagrees. What remains contested is exactly what those properties should become, and who gets to decide.

Interested in the Newport Beach market? Browse Newport Beach homes for sale or explore new construction homes in Newport Beach. You can also contact Eric Engelbert directly to discuss the waterfront market.
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July 8, 2026

Lincoln Property's 100 Townhomes at 1500 Quail Street: Newport Beach Airport Area Gets Family-Sized Homes

By Eric Engelbert

Uptown Newport Beach: The Airport Area's Quiet Transformation

In the early 2000s, roughly 30 percent of the world's construction cranes were operating in Berlin as Germany's reunified capital rebuilt itself in a compressed window of time. The result was one of the most visible urban transformations in modern history, visible from virtually every vantage point in the city.

Newport Beach is writing a smaller but structurally similar story. In Newport Center, luxury residential towers are rising to 270 feet and above. In the Airport Area, a different kind of transformation is underway: the quiet conversion of underperforming office campuses into what city planners have started calling "Uptown Newport Beach."

Fourteen housing projects totaling nearly 3,000 units are at various stages of approval and development in the airport area as of early 2026. The newest addition is a unanimous Planning Commission vote in April 2026 to approve Lincoln Property Company's plan to tear down an 86,000-square-foot office tower at 1500 Quail Street and replace it with 100 for-sale townhomes.

This is not a luxury high-rise. It is something Newport Beach has rarely seen in recent development cycles: a ground-up, for-sale neighborhood of family-sized homes, built by one of the country's largest real estate companies, on land that the developer already owns and has been quietly repositioning for years.

Lincoln Property Company: From Dallas to Newport Beach

Lincoln Property Company was founded in Dallas in 1965 and has grown into one of the largest diversified real estate firms in the United States, with operations spanning development, investment, and property management across commercial and residential asset classes. The company operates a dedicated West Coast platform, LPC West, which handles its California development pipeline including the 1500 Quail project.

Lincoln Property acquired the office tower at 1500 Quail Street in 2018 for $32 million. At the time, the seven-story, 86,000-square-foot building was an income-producing office asset. The Airport Area surrounding John Wayne International Airport had long been one of the denser office submarkets in Orange County, attracting professional services firms, tech companies, and corporate back-office operations drawn by proximity to the airport and major freeways.

What changed was the office market itself. The post-pandemic shift toward remote and hybrid work hit suburban office buildings across Orange County harder than almost any other category of real estate. By the mid-2020s, many Airport Area office buildings were carrying significant vacancy, and the economics of repositioning to residential had become increasingly attractive, particularly given Newport Beach's state-mandated housing obligation and the new entitlement frameworks that came with it.

Lincoln Property did not chase this trend. The company had owned the site for years, and the conversion to residential was a deliberate reposition of an underperforming asset into a product category with deep demand in one of California's most desirable cities.

The Residences at 1500 Quail: Project Snapshot

The Residences at 1500 Quail Street will replace the existing seven-story office building with a ground-up townhome community spread across 4.8 acres. The project includes 24 individual townhome buildings containing a total of 100 for-sale condominiums.

Every unit offers three or four bedrooms, ranging in size from 1,591 to 1,876 square feet. Total project square footage is 236,408. Building heights are capped at 39 feet. Each home comes with a two-car garage, a detail that distinguishes this project from the apartment developments going up elsewhere in Newport Beach's housing pipeline.

The site will include outdoor dining areas with barbecues and pizza ovens, a lawn designed for casual games and gatherings, and open spaces with seating and fountains. A dedicated pedestrian walkway will connect the community to Lincoln Property's adjacent development at 1300 Dove Street, a 132-townhome project with three- and four-bedroom units spread across three to four stories.

The two projects together would create a contiguous neighborhood of more than 230 for-sale homes on former office land within walking distance of John Wayne Airport, a cluster of major employment centers, and the retail and restaurant corridor along Bristol Street.

Detail 1500 Quail Street
Developer Lincoln Property Company (via Quail Newport Owner LLC)
Site 4.8 acres, Airport Area near John Wayne International Airport
What's being demolished 86,000 sq ft, 7-story office building + surface parking lot
Office building acquired 2018 by Lincoln Property for $32 million
Units 100 for-sale condominiums (market-rate only)
Buildings 24 townhome buildings, max 39 feet
Unit sizes 1,591 to 1,876 sq ft, 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2-car garage each
Total project sq ft 236,408 sq ft
Planned community Newport Place Planned Community
Planning Commission vote Unanimous approval, early April 2026
Adjacent project 1300 Dove St. (also Lincoln Property): 132 townhomes, 3-4 stories, connected by dedicated walkway

The "Uptown Newport Beach" Context

The Residences at 1500 Quail does not exist in isolation. City planners have been quietly building a narrative around the Airport Area housing wave, calling it "Uptown Newport Beach" and framing the cluster of new developments as a deliberate reimagining of a job-dense but underhoused district.

The anchor project in the airport area was Uptown Newport, a 1,244-unit mixed-use development approved by the city in 2013 and developed by Shopoff Realty Investments and the Picerne Group. The first phase of Uptown Newport was completed in 2021 and gave the area its first significant infusion of residential density near John Wayne Airport.

Since then, the pipeline has expanded dramatically. As of early 2026, 14 housing projects totaling approximately 3,000 units are at various stages of approval and construction in the airport area. The Irvine Company alone is adding 700 units at MacArthur Court near the airport (approved December 2025, 49 affordable units required off-site, $3.3 million toward MacArthur Boulevard improvements). Lincoln Property's two projects together contribute more than 230 for-sale homes to that pipeline.

What the city's planning staff emphasized in the staff report for 1500 Quail is the location's employment proximity. Future residents at 1500 Quail Street will live within short driving or biking distance of some of Orange County's largest employer clusters, including the financial, tech, and professional services firms concentrated along the Bristol Street and MacArthur Boulevard corridor. "This is exactly the type of infill development the state is pushing cities toward," staff wrote.

Parke Miller, Executive Vice President at Lincoln Property, spoke to the Planning Commission directly. "Our team has taken a lot of time to put together a really thoughtful development that we're really proud of," he said.

What Makes This Project Different

The defining characteristic of The Residences at 1500 Quail is that it is not apartments. Almost every other major project in Newport Beach's current housing pipeline, from the Irvine Company's Block 100 to Villas Fashion Island Phase 2 to MacArthur Court, consists of rental apartments. Related California's towers at the Edwards Big Newport site will be for-sale condominiums, but those are a very different product: luxury units priced well above $5 million in a high-rise format.

The 1500 Quail townhomes occupy a different part of the Newport Beach housing market. At 1,591 to 1,876 square feet with three or four bedrooms and a two-car garage in each unit, these are homes designed for households that need more space than a one- or two-bedroom apartment but are priced out of the single-family detached market in Newport Beach, where median prices routinely exceed $3 million.

For families who work in the Airport Area or Newport Center and want to own rather than rent in Newport Beach, this project represents a product type that has been largely absent from the new construction pipeline for years. The combination of family-sized floor plans, for-sale ownership, two-car garages, and a walkable community connection to the adjacent 1300 Dove Street project gives the development a neighborhood feel that sets it apart from the more urban apartment towers being built elsewhere in the city.

The 39-foot height cap also matters. In a city where new projects in Newport Center are pushing toward 300 feet, the low-rise profile of 1500 Quail is deliberately suburban in character, designed to blend with the surrounding Airport Area rather than transform the skyline.

The Affordable Housing Debate

The unanimous Planning Commission vote obscured a real tension in the public hearing. The Residences at 1500 Quail contains zero affordable units. In a city that carries a state-mandated obligation for 4,845 new housing units through 2029, with approximately 71 percent of those units, or roughly 3,436, required to be affordable to lower- and moderate-income households, a 100-unit market-rate project with no income-restricted homes is a legitimate planning question.

One resident who spoke at the public hearing put it directly: "That puts the requirement higher of how much affordable housing will have to be developed in the rest of those 8,174, quite a few of which we've already assigned. This is contributing to that problem, which I think will come back to bite us."

Newport Beach's planning manager Ben Zdeba pushed back. "We do have an adequate buffer, even considering the possible approval before you today," he said. City staff noted that the 1500 Quail project satisfies the state's "no net loss" provision because other designated sites across Newport Beach are set aside to provide the required affordable units, and the Community Development Department's records show enough space remaining to meet the state's requirements even with this market-rate approval in the mix.

The tension is genuine and not going away. Newport Beach faces a clock on its affordable housing obligations, and each market-rate approval without affordable components increases the density of affordable housing that must be delivered on the remaining sites. The city's position is that it has a plan and the buffer to execute it. Whether that buffer proves adequate as the 2029 deadline approaches is a question that will be answered one approval at a time.

Pricing, Property Tax, and Financial Impact

Lincoln Property has not publicly released pricing for The Residences at 1500 Quail Street. The project will be sold as for-sale condominiums, with pricing determined closer to completion. For context, comparable new construction townhomes in Newport Beach's Airport Area have recently traded in the $1.4 million to $2 million range. Given the 1500 Quail product's size (up to 1,876 sq ft, 4 bedrooms, 2-car garage), brand-new construction quality, and Newport Beach address, pricing in the $1.5 million to $2.5 million range per unit is a reasonable estimate, though the market at delivery will ultimately determine final pricing.

At a $2 million average sales price, the 100-unit project would generate a total sellout of approximately $200 million. Property taxes on for-sale condominiums work straightforwardly under Proposition 13: each unit is assessed at its individual sale price at the time of purchase. At 1 percent of assessed value, a $2 million unit generates $20,000 per year in property taxes. Newport Beach retains approximately 16 percent of property tax revenue collected within the city.

If all 100 units sell in the $1.5 million to $2.5 million range, the project's contribution to Newport Beach's annual property tax revenue would be approximately $240,000 to $400,000 per year, growing modestly as units appreciate and the 2 percent annual cap under Proposition 13 applies. When units eventually resell at higher prices, the tax base resets upward to the new purchase price, making the long-term revenue contribution higher than the initial years suggest.

Beyond direct property taxes, 100 for-sale homeowners in the Airport Area contribute to the local economy through HOA fees, retail spending, and service purchases in a way that long-term rental households do as well, but with the additional benefit of stable, owner-occupant presence in the community.

Affordable Housing and AMI

Because The Residences at 1500 Quail contains no income-restricted units, the AMI discussion here is brief but worth noting for buyers evaluating the broader Newport Beach housing market.

Newport Beach uses Orange County Area Median Income for any affordability calculations, not city-level or statewide income figures. Orange County's 2025 AMI for a family of four was $169,200. A unit priced at 80 percent AMI (Low Income) would carry a maximum purchase price far below what the market will bear at 1500 Quail. A unit affordable at 120 percent AMI would still be priced well below the estimated market-rate range for this project.

In practical terms, the 1500 Quail townhomes are not affordable housing and are not designed to be. They are market-rate, for-sale homes in one of the most desirable cities in Southern California. The affordability story for Newport Beach plays out on other sites, other projects, and other entitlements. What 1500 Quail offers is ownership in a city where ownership has become increasingly rare in new construction. That is a different kind of value proposition than affordability, but it is one that will resonate with a meaningful segment of Newport Beach's housing market.

What Comes Next

With Planning Commission approval secured, Lincoln Property's next step is construction. No groundbreaking date has been officially announced, but the typical timeline from unanimous Planning Commission approval through demolition, grading, and construction suggests the first homes at The Residences at 1500 Quail Street could be available for purchase sometime in 2028 or 2029, depending on the pace of demolition of the existing office building and the construction schedule for 24 separate townhome structures.

The adjacent 1300 Dove Street project, also by Lincoln Property and connected by the planned pedestrian walkway, is a separate entitlement that will move on its own schedule. If both projects reach construction at roughly the same time, the combined 232-unit community could open as a contiguous neighborhood rather than two separate development phases arriving at different times.

The Airport Area housing wave is not slowing down. The Irvine Company's MacArthur Court, Uptown Newport's ongoing phases, and the 14-project pipeline confirmed in early 2026 suggest that "Uptown Newport Beach" will look considerably different by 2030 than it does today. Lincoln Property's 1500 Quail project is one significant piece of that transformation, and it brings a product type, family-sized for-sale townhomes with two-car garages, that has been missing from the new construction conversation in Newport Beach for years.

Watching the Newport Beach market? Read our full overview of Newport Beach's housing transformation or contact Eric Engelbert to discuss buying or selling in the Airport Area or anywhere in Newport Beach.
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July 8, 2026

Newport Beach Car Wash Sold to Irvine Company: The 12-Year Story Behind Block 100's Newest Parcel

By Eric Engelbert

A Car Wash at the Center of a Real Estate Revolution

In the early 2000s, roughly 30 percent of the world's construction cranes were operating in Berlin as Germany's reunified capital rebuilt its skyline in a compressed window of time. City blocks that had sat frozen for decades suddenly became some of the most consequential building sites on earth.

Newport Beach is not Berlin. But the concentration of major development projects now converging on Newport Center tells a version of the same story: what happens when a single neighborhood becomes the focal point of a region's housing future all at once.

Luxury residential towers are rising near Fashion Island. The former Newport Beach Marriott is converting to Ritz-Carlton Residences. The Irvine Company has approvals for nearly 800 apartments across multiple Newport Center sites. Related California is planning two 22-story towers at the site of the old Edwards Big Newport cinema.

And now, a car wash that served this community for more than 51 years has quietly closed. Its 1.26-acre lot has been folded into the Irvine Company's growing land position in Newport Center, set to become part of the Block 100 apartment development adjacent to Fashion Island.

This is the story of 150 Newport Center Drive West, and the twelve-year journey that ended there.

Fifty-One Years on the Suds Beat

The Newport Beach Car Wash opened in the mid-1970s at the intersection of Newport Center Drive West and Anacapa Drive, just inside the loop of streets that surround Fashion Island. For more than half a century it occupied a spot that, in retrospect, was always going to be worth considerably more than the business sitting on it.

Newport Center was conceived and built by the Irvine Company as a planned commercial and retail hub for the growing communities of South Orange County. The same land values that made the area work for Class A office towers and department stores also made a 1.26-acre surface parcel with aging car wash infrastructure an eventual redevelopment target. The only question was when.

What kept the car wash running so long was a combination of loyal customers and the full-service model that distinguished it from the automated drive-through competitors expanding across Southern California. It was also the simple fact that redeveloping anything in Newport Beach takes longer than most developers expect.

"The business of car washes has changed," managing partner Tod Ridgeway told the Orange County Business Journal in June 2026. "You just can't do that anymore." He was referring to the labor-intensive, full-service operation the car wash had relied on for decades.

He did not sound particularly nostalgic. He sounded like someone who had spent twelve years trying to build something larger on that lot and had finally found a different way forward.

Tod Ridgeway: Former Mayor, Long-Time Believer in Mixed-Use

Ridgeway is not simply a car wash operator. He served as Mayor of Newport Beach and spent years as a vocal advocate for bringing mixed-use development to Fashion Island and the broader Newport Center area.

"When there was a general plan amendment in 2006, I championed mixed-use in Fashion Island," he told the Business Journal. "I did not have the unanimous support of the council at that point in time, but I was always a believer in mixed-use."

The 2006 push did not produce the outcome Ridgeway envisioned. But he was directionally correct about where Newport Center was heading. The transformation that is now underway, two decades later, vindicates the argument he was making then.

In 2014, Ridgeway's managing partnership, Newport Anacapa Associates LLC, purchased the 1.26-acre car wash property for $11.8 million, according to CoStar records. The site sits at 150 Newport Center Drive West, bordered by Newport Center Drive to the south and Anacapa Drive to the east, directly adjacent to the Gateway Plaza office campus that the Irvine Company later targeted for its Block 100 apartment project.

From the moment Newport Anacapa closed the deal, the plan was to develop it.

A Decade of Development Attempts

Between 2014 and 2026, Newport Anacapa Associates pursued at least three separate development concepts for the car wash site. Each one met a different kind of obstacle.

The first proposal was a 125-room hotel. Hotels in Newport Beach require a General Plan Amendment, which in Newport Beach becomes subject to a public vote if opponents gather sufficient signatures. Opponents did. Newport Beach voters rejected the hotel proposal, and the concept was abandoned.

The partnership turned to condominiums. An early iteration called for a six-story, 49-unit condominium building. That plan was later revised downward to a four-story, 28-unit luxury condominium project with units averaging roughly 2,500 to 3,000 square feet each. The revised design included a rooftop pool and two levels of below-grade parking, reaching a total height of approximately 53 feet.

The 28-unit project required a General Plan Amendment, a Zone Code Amendment, a Planned Community Development Plan, a Major Site Development Review, a Tentative Tract Map, and a Development Agreement. An Environmental Impact Report Notice of Preparation was filed in November 2020. The assigned city planner was Liz Westmoreland.

The project appeared to be moving. Then the rules changed underneath it.

Year Event
Mid-1970s Newport Beach Car Wash opens at 150 Newport Center Drive West
2006 Tod Ridgeway, then Newport Beach Mayor, champions mixed-use development at Fashion Island in General Plan Amendment; does not receive unanimous council support
2014 Newport Anacapa Associates LLC purchases car wash site for $11.8M; car wash continues operating during entitlement process
2014-2016 125-room hotel proposal advanced; rejected by Newport Beach voters via General Plan Amendment referendum
2015-2017 49-unit, six-story condominium concept proposed; later revised downward
November 2020 EIR Notice of Preparation filed for revised 28-unit, four-story condominium plan (approx. 53 ft, rooftop pool, 2-level underground parking); planner Liz Westmoreland
2021-2025 Newport Center rezoned under PC-56 framework; height limits raised first to 85 ft and later higher; 28-unit plan becomes economically obsolete
June 16, 2026 Sale closes and records; Irvine Company pays $32,500,000 for the 1.26-acre parcel
May 2026 Newport Beach Car Wash officially closes after more than 51 years; site fenced off
June 22, 2026 Irvine Company purchase reported by the Orange County Business Journal; Block 100 integration confirmed

The Entitlement Treadmill

The problem was not the 28-unit project itself. It was that the planning environment shifted dramatically between the time Newport Anacapa filed its EIR and the time that document was making its way through the process.

When the condo plan was first moving through city review, the height limit at that location was capped at 55 feet. Newport Beach subsequently adopted the PC-56 Planned Community framework for Newport Center, a set of zoning changes designed to accommodate the city's state-mandated housing obligation. The Planning Commission raised the height limit to 85 feet. Additional adjustments followed.

"We were going to have to start all over to re-entitle our site," Ridgeway told the Business Journal. Starting over meant new environmental review, new General Plan and Zone Code amendments, new public hearings, and a timeline measured in additional years.

Ridgeway understood that the zoning changes had actually increased the value of the site. A parcel that could support 28 condos at 55 feet could support a considerably larger project at 85-plus feet. But capturing that value as a small independent operator navigating Newport Beach's entitlement process was a different problem entirely.

"There was so much activity going on and there was value created with the new height," he said. "Based upon time and place more than anything, we were in a position where it was beneficial for our business plan to go ahead and sell it."

Newport Anacapa had owned the site for twelve years. Three development concepts had advanced and stalled. The rational move was to sell to the one entity in Newport Center that did not have an entitlement problem.

The Irvine Company's Strategic Acquisition

The sale recorded on June 16, 2026. County records confirm the Irvine Company paid $32,500,000 for the 1.26-acre parcel. The price was not disclosed in press coverage at the time, including the Orange County Business Journal's June 22 report. The $32.5 million figure represents nearly three times the $11.8 million Newport Anacapa Associates paid in 2014, a return that reflects both the 12-year hold and the value created by Newport Center's rezoning under the PC-56 framework.

At roughly $25.8 million per acre, the Irvine Company paid a Newport Center land value consistent with the premium the area commands. For context, the Irvine Company's 2025 acquisition of 100 Newport Center Drive (the former Newport Sports Museum property) for $36.5 million established what was reported as the highest per-square-foot office sale price in Orange County history for buildings over 15,000 square feet. The car wash parcel, at $32.5 million for 1.26 acres of commercially zoned Newport Center land, belongs in the same tier.

What the Irvine Company gains is a clean addition to its Block 100 land position. Block 100 is the development name for the company's plan to convert the 142,000-square-foot Gateway Plaza office campus at 110 Newport Center Drive into approximately 600 apartments. The project calls for a five-story podium structure with two levels of underground parking. Architect MVE + Partners is leading the design.

The car wash parcel at 150 Newport Center Drive West sits directly adjacent to that campus, separated by Anacapa Drive. Adding 1.26 acres to the Block 100 footprint could increase the total unit count beyond the 600 currently approved. The Irvine Company has stated only that it plans to "seamlessly integrate" the car wash site into the larger development. Revised plans have not been publicly released.

This kind of parcel consolidation is standard operating procedure for the Irvine Company. The firm built Newport Center, owns Fashion Island, developed the Villas Fashion Island apartment complex, and controls most of the office campus acreage now being converted to residential use. Picking up a 1.26-acre gap site between its projects eliminates a planning seam and gives the design team a larger, more coherent footprint to work with.

Read more: Irvine Company Block 100: 600 Apartments Coming to the Heart of Newport Center

Where This Fits in the Newport Center Story

Newport Beach carries a state housing obligation of 4,845 units under California's 2021-2029 Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Newport Center is expected to absorb roughly 2,439 of those units. The Irvine Company holds vested rights under the PC-56 framework to build up to 1,500 units in Newport Center with administrative approval rather than full public hearings.

That 1,500-unit allocation is being deployed across multiple projects. Villas Fashion Island Phase 2 accounts for 184 units now under construction, with completion expected in early 2028. Block 100 accounts for up to 600 units at 110 Newport Center Drive. Once the car wash parcel is incorporated, the combined Block 100 footprint may support additional units beyond the current approval, though revised entitlements would be required.

The 28-unit condominium plan that Newport Anacapa pursued through multiple rounds of city review is now permanently superseded. The site will be apartments, not for-sale condominiums. The developer will be the Irvine Company, not Newport Anacapa. And the scale of the project it joins is roughly 25 times larger than what the former owners were trying to build.

That is not a verdict on Newport Anacapa's judgment. Ridgeway saw the mixed-use future of Newport Center in 2006 when the city council could not reach consensus on it. He was right about the direction. He simply could not move fast enough through the entitlement process to capture the value he had identified before the environment shifted again.

Property Tax and Financial Impact

Under Proposition 13, California property is taxed at 1 percent of assessed value at time of purchase, with annual increases capped at 2 percent. The Irvine Company's $32,500,000 acquisition of the car wash site, recorded June 16, 2026, resets the assessed value to that purchase price. At 1 percent, the parcel now generates approximately $325,000 per year in total property taxes. Newport Beach retains roughly 16 percent of property tax revenue, putting the city's annual share from the land itself at approximately $52,000 per year.

The more significant tax impact comes when Block 100 is built and leased. If the combined project delivers 650 or more apartment units at Newport Center market rents, the assessed value of the finished complex at completion could approach or exceed $600 million. At 1 percent base tax and accounting for Newport Beach's approximately 16 percent share of property tax revenue, the Block 100 project as a whole, including the former car wash parcel, could generate $900,000 or more per year in property tax revenue for the city once fully operational.

Because the Irvine Company is expected to retain Block 100 as a rental portfolio rather than sell individual units, Proposition 13's reassessment rules mean the full complex will be assessed at the time of the eventual portfolio transaction. In a sale, the reset to market value would produce a substantially larger tax base.

The car wash site itself contributed modest assessed value to Newport Beach's tax rolls. Its potential contribution as part of a 600-plus-unit luxury apartment complex is materially larger.

Affordable Housing and AMI

The car wash parcel carried no independent affordable housing obligation under Newport Anacapa's ownership. The site was never entitled for residential use, and the 28-unit condo plan never reached final approval. Once integrated into Block 100 under the Irvine Company's PC-56 framework, affordable housing requirements for this parcel will be governed by the overall Block 100 entitlement.

Newport Center's PC-56 Planned Community framework requires the Irvine Company to deliver 105 income-restricted units across all Newport Center residential projects through 2029. How those units are distributed across Block 100, Villas Fashion Island Phase 2, and any future projects in the PC-56 allocation has not been publicly detailed. The addition of the car wash site to Block 100's footprint is unlikely to significantly alter that total obligation, though it may affect how and where affordable units are sited within the combined project.

Any income-restricted units within the finished Block 100 complex will be priced according to Orange County Area Median Income, not Newport Beach city-level figures or statewide income benchmarks. Orange County's 2025 AMI for a family of four was $169,200. A two-bedroom unit at 50 percent AMI (Very Low Income) is capped at approximately $1,903 per month. At 60 percent AMI the cap is approximately $2,284 per month.

The vast majority of Block 100 units, including those on the former car wash site, will be market-rate apartments priced at multiples of those thresholds.

Fifty-One Years, Twelve Years, One Sale

The Newport Beach Car Wash lasted more than half a century because full-service car washes, once established in affluent communities, tend to hold onto loyal customer bases long after the underlying economics would have justified closing. The labor-intensive model survived long past the era that created it.

When Newport Anacapa purchased the site in 2014, the intent was to redevelop it. Twelve years, three development concepts, one voter rejection, two rounds of environmental review, and multiple cycles of zoning overhaul later, the Irvine Company is the one that will build on it.

"It was sad to let it go," Ridgeway said of the closure. He added that he understood longtime customers would feel the same way.

But he also said: "I'm happy to certainly move on."

That is probably the right frame for this parcel's history. The car wash was a successful business for a long time. The development effort was a genuine attempt by a politically connected, market-aware operator to participate in Newport Center's evolution. And the Irvine Company acquisition is not a story of failure. It is a story of Newport Center pulling everything toward a common gravitational center, one adjacent parcel at a time, as the city's housing transformation accelerates into the decade ahead.

Tracking Newport Center's transformation? Read our full guide to Newport Beach's housing future or contact Eric Engelbert to talk about buying or selling in this changing market.
Posted in Real Estate News
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July 8, 2026

Irvine Company Block 100: 600 Apartments Coming to 100-190 Newport Center Drive

By Eric Engelbert

600 Apartments Where Newport Center's Office Core Stands Today

This is the fourth in a series of individual project profiles covering Newport Beach's residential development pipeline. The first three focused on projects that are either under construction or in active appeals. Block 100 is different: it is a project in the planning and design phase, approved at the zoning level but not yet permitted for construction. It is also the largest single residential project the Irvine Company has proposed within Newport Center's inner ring, and it sits on some of the most valuable land in Orange County.

Block 100 refers to a cluster of low-rise office buildings at 100 to 190 Newport Center Drive, bordered by Newport Center Drive, Anacapa Drive, and Civic Center Drive, within a short walk of both Fashion Island and Newport Beach City Hall. The Irvine Company has filed plans to demolish approximately 141,000 square feet of existing office space on the block and replace it with up to 600 luxury apartments in five-story podium buildings.

If the project is built as planned, it would be the single largest addition to Newport Beach's rental housing stock in a generation, concentrated on a block that has been office-only for half a century.

What Is on Block 100 Today

The Block 100 area of Newport Center developed as low-rise professional office space in the 1970s and 1980s, consistent with the original Irvine Company master plan for Newport Center as a business and retail hub rather than a residential neighborhood. The buildings in the 100 to 190 Newport Center Drive address range are one- to three-story commercial structures, most of them approaching or exceeding 50 years old.

The most prominent of them is 100 Newport Center Drive, a roughly 17,400-square-foot building with an unusual history. It was long home to the Newport Sports Museum, an exhibit of sports memorabilia and trophies that drew visitors and local school groups for years. The museum eventually closed, and the building sat vacant while its prior owner, Iridium Property Investments, a local family office, explored redevelopment options. A plan to rebuild it as modern office space was proposed but never moved forward.

The Irvine Company acquired 100 Newport Center Drive from Iridium Property Investments for approximately $36.5 million. At roughly $2,100 per square foot for a 17,400-square-foot building, the acquisition was reported to be the highest price per square foot ever paid for an Orange County office property larger than 15,000 square feet. The price reflects the land value more than the building value: 100 Newport Center Drive is essentially a tear-down, and the Irvine Company bought it for its location within a block it intends to redevelop entirely.

Other parcels within Block 100, including 190 Newport Center Drive, were already part of the Irvine Company's long-held Newport Center portfolio, owned continuously since the company laid out Newport Center in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Project: 600 Apartments, Five Stories, One of Newport Center's Most Prominent Blocks

The Irvine Company's plans call for demolishing the existing office buildings at 100 to 190 Newport Center Drive and replacing them with up to 600 apartments in five-story podium-type buildings with two levels of underground parking. Total office square footage being removed: approximately 141,000 square feet.

The buildings are designed by MVE + Partners, the Irvine-based architecture firm that is also the architect of record for the Ritz-Carlton Residences at 900 Newport Center Drive. MVE has a long history in Newport Center and Orange County high-rise and podium residential design. For Block 100, a five-story podium format is consistent with the surrounding Newport Center scale while maximizing density within the PC-56 framework.

The Block 100 zoning now permits residential buildings up to 125 feet in height, well above the five-story podium plan. That height allowance was part of the PC-56 amendment package and leaves the door open for a future taller version of the project if market conditions or developer objectives change before construction permits are issued.

No unit mix, floor plan sizes, or amenity details have been publicly released. The 600-unit count is the approved maximum under the current plans.

Project Snapshot: Irvine Company Block 100

Address: 100-190 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach
Plan: Up to 600 luxury apartments
Format: 5-story podium buildings, 2-level underground parking
Office removed: approximately 141,000 sq ft
Height limit: up to 125 feet (under PC-56)
Architect: MVE + Partners
Status: Planning and design phase as of July 2026
Construction start: not yet announced

The Zoning Amendment That Unlocked Block 100

The Block 100 parcels were zoned for office and regional commercial use for decades. Converting them to residential required a formal zoning amendment, which is a more significant step than the administrative PC-56 approval that covered the 800 San Clemente parking-to-apartments project.

The Newport Beach Planning Commission voted 5-0 on March 21, 2025 to approve amendments to the North Newport Center Planned Community zoning (PC-56). The Irvine Company requested the amendments as part of a comprehensive update to the PC-56 framework, including several key changes:

  • Rezoning of 100 and 190 Newport Center Drive from office-regional to PC-56 residential
  • Vesting the Irvine Company's right to build up to 1,500 residential units within Newport Center
  • Increased building height limits for Fashion Island, Block 100, and San Joaquin Plaza
  • Modified parking standards for residential uses
  • Updated open space, signage, and design standards

The unanimous 5-0 vote reflected broad Planning Commission support for the Irvine Company's overall Newport Center residential strategy. Unlike projects that require Council appeals or face organized community opposition, the PC-56 framework gives the Irvine Company a pre-approved path within established parameters. Block 100's rezoning was the most significant individual action in the March 2025 amendment package because it converted land that had been zoned commercial since the 1970s to a residential use for the first time.

No construction permits have been issued for Block 100 as of July 2026. The project remains in design development, and the Irvine Company has not announced a construction start date or projected completion timeline.

Why Office-to-Residential Makes Sense Here

Newport Center's office market has faced pressure for years. Remote and hybrid work reduced demand for traditional suburban office space after 2020, and some Newport Center office buildings have struggled with vacancy. The 141,000 square feet being cleared on Block 100 represents office product that is approaching 50 years old, functionally obsolete by current standards, and sitting on some of the most coveted real estate in Orange County.

Newport Beach city planners actively encouraged the conversion. The city needs to plan for 4,845 new housing units by 2029 under its state-mandated Housing Element, and Newport Center is one of the few places in the city where residential density can be added near existing infrastructure without demolishing established neighborhoods. Converting underperforming office space to housing accomplishes that without displacing existing residents.

The Irvine Company benefits on both sides of the equation. It removes aging, lower-yield office product from its portfolio and replaces it with luxury rental apartments, which have historically been among the most resilient and high-performing asset types in Orange County's supply-constrained coastal markets. The company keeps the land, builds on it, and collects rent indefinitely rather than selling.

Block 100 is not the only office-to-residential conversion the Irvine Company is pursuing. The company has also received approval to convert the MacArthur Court campus near John Wayne Airport into 700 apartments, a separate project in the Airport Area that is not part of the PC-56 Newport Center framework.

What Will Block 100 Apartments Rent For?

No pricing has been released. The project has not entered the permitting phase and is likely two to three years from a leasing launch at minimum, depending on when construction begins.

The best comparable in Newport Center is the existing Villas Fashion Island community at 1000 San Joaquin Plaza, where current rents start at approximately $5,195 per month and reach $8,000 to $9,000 per month for larger units. Block 100 sits in a similarly central Newport Center location, within walking distance of Fashion Island, and would offer comparable or slightly different price positioning depending on unit size, finish level, and amenities.

Applying current Newport Center market rent levels to a 600-unit project with an assumed mix of one- and two-bedroom units:

  • One-bedroom units: estimated $4,800 to $6,200 per month at 2026-2027 rates
  • Two-bedroom units: estimated $7,000 to $9,500 per month
  • Annual revenue at full occupancy (600 units): potentially $45 million to $60 million per year

These estimates will shift depending on market conditions at the time of lease-up, which is unlikely to occur before 2028 or 2029 at the earliest given the current planning timeline.

There are no income-restricted units announced for Block 100. The Irvine Company's development agreement for Newport Center requires 105 affordable units by 2029, but the allocation of those units across specific projects has not been publicly detailed.

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What Block 100 Means for Newport Beach's Tax Base

The Irvine Company's $36.5 million acquisition of 100 Newport Center Drive triggered a Proposition 13 reassessment of that parcel at the purchase price. For the other Block 100 parcels already owned by the Irvine Company, the Prop 13 assessed value reflects a much older acquisition base, likely a small fraction of current market value.

When Block 100 is developed and the new residential buildings go on the tax rolls, the improvement value of the new construction will be assessed at cost. A 600-unit, five-story podium apartment complex in Newport Beach would represent a construction investment likely in the range of $250 million to $350 million. Adding that construction value to the combined land assessment would produce a significantly higher total assessed value than the current office buildings generate.

Approximate annual property tax at 1.1% of a $300 million combined assessed value:

  • Total annual property tax: approximately $3.3 million
  • Newport Beach's share at roughly 17 cents per dollar: approximately $560,000 per year

Because the Irvine Company retains the apartments rather than selling individual units, each unit does not get reassessed at a sale price. The fiscal benefit to Newport Beach is real but more modest than it would be for an equivalent for-sale condominium project. The larger economic contribution is indirect: 600 new households in Newport Center increases Fashion Island sales tax revenue, supports local businesses, and deepens the rationale for continued investment in the surrounding commercial district, all of which benefit the Irvine Company's broader Newport Center holdings as well.

Block 100's Place in the 1,500-Unit Newport Center Master Plan

The Irvine Company's 1,500-unit vested right in Newport Center is the largest single residential allocation in the city's history. Block 100 at 600 units is the single largest component of that allocation.

Combining the three Irvine Company Newport Center residential projects in the current pipeline:

  • 800 San Clemente Drive (Villas Fashion Island Phase 2): 184 units, under construction, completion early 2028
  • Block 100 (100-190 Newport Center Drive): up to 600 units, in planning, no construction start date
  • Remaining 1,500-unit allocation: approximately 716 units to be deployed across future Newport Center sites

The Irvine Company has also received separate approval for 700 apartments at the MacArthur Court campus near John Wayne Airport, which sits outside the PC-56 Newport Center framework and counts toward Newport Beach's housing goals through a different entitlement path.

Taken together, the Irvine Company's currently approved and planned residential pipeline across Newport Beach exceeds 1,500 units from Newport Center alone, plus 700 more at MacArthur Court. This is the most aggressive residential development program the company has undertaken within Newport Beach since the original construction of Villas Fashion Island in 2017.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is at 100-190 Newport Center Drive today?

The Block 100 area currently contains a cluster of one- to three-story office buildings, most built in the 1970s and 1980s. The most notable is 100 Newport Center Drive, the former home of the Newport Sports Museum, which the Irvine Company acquired from Iridium Property Investments for $36.5 million. The other buildings in the block are aging commercial structures that are approaching the end of their useful life as competitive office space.

How many apartments will Block 100 have?

The approved plan calls for up to 600 apartments in five-story podium buildings with two levels of underground parking. The unit mix, floor plan sizes, and amenities have not been publicly released.

When will Block 100 break ground?

No construction start date has been announced. The PC-56 zoning amendment that rezoned the block for residential use was approved by the Newport Beach Planning Commission in March 2025. As of July 2026, the project remains in the planning and design phase. A realistic construction start is likely no earlier than 2027, with completion potentially in 2029 or 2030.

Who is the architect?

MVE + Partners, an Irvine-based architectural firm, is the designer of record. MVE is also the architect for the Ritz-Carlton Residences at 900 Newport Center Drive and has a long track record of residential and mixed-use projects throughout Orange County.

Are there affordable units in Block 100?

No affordable units have been announced for Block 100 specifically. The Irvine Company's broader Newport Center development agreement requires 105 affordable units across its Newport Center projects by 2029, but the allocation of those units by project and location has not been publicly detailed.

Newport Beach Is Changing: What It Means for Buyers and Renters

Block 100, combined with the other projects in this series, represents the largest wave of residential development Newport Beach has seen in decades. Whether you are planning to rent in Newport Center, looking to buy before the market shifts, or simply trying to understand where values are headed, I can help you think through your options.

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July 8, 2026

Irvine Company Villas at Fashion Island Phase 2: 184 New Apartments at 800 San Clemente Drive

By Eric Engelbert

When a Parking Garage Becomes 184 Apartments

Newport Beach's skyline transformation is not only about new towers rising on vacant or commercial land. In some cases, the shift is quieter: a parking structure that has sat mostly unused since the pandemic comes down, and housing goes up in its place. That is exactly what is happening at 800 San Clemente Drive, where the Irvine Company demolished an 842-space parking garage in December 2025 and broke ground on 184 luxury apartments in May 2026.

This is the third in a series of individual project profiles covering Newport Beach's residential development pipeline. The Irvine Company's Phase 2 expansion at Villas Fashion Island does not carry the headline drama of a 22-story branded tower, but it is already under construction, moves the fastest of any current Newport Center residential project, and is part of a 1,500-unit master plan that will fundamentally change how people live in and around Fashion Island over the next decade.

For Newport Beach, it is also a case study in how a city can fast-track housing without triggering the usual layers of public opposition, provided the developer owns essentially everything.

Who Owns Newport Center? The Short Answer Is Donald Bren

Newport Center was master-planned in the 1960s by William Pereira, the architect hired by the Irvine Company to create a self-contained commercial village on the Irvine Ranch. The Irvine Company has owned the land under Fashion Island, the surrounding office towers, and most of the supporting commercial real estate in Newport Center since the beginning. That has never changed.

Donald Bren purchased a controlling interest in the Irvine Company in 1983 and has since acquired 100 percent ownership. He runs the company privately. Bren is consistently ranked among the wealthiest real estate investors in the United States, with a net worth estimated in the range of $17 billion. The Irvine Company holds approximately 126 million square feet of real estate across 560 communities, 40 office campuses, and a large retail portfolio. Newport Center sits at the center of that empire geographically and symbolically.

Because the Irvine Company already owns the land at 800 San Clemente Drive outright as part of its Newport Center holdings, there is no acquisition cost to report for this project. The parking garage that previously occupied the 2.2-acre site was a Irvine Company asset. There was no land sale, no transfer price, and no third-party buyer. The company simply chose to redevelop its own property from a lower and lower use into housing.

That distinction matters for how this project compares to others in the Newport Beach pipeline. Most of the other developments profiled in this series involved a land sale, a new owner, or a creative entitlement process. The Irvine Company's Phase 2 project is a master-planned owner converting underperforming parking into high-demand housing on land it has held for more than half a century.

The Project: Phase 2 at Villas Fashion Island

The existing Villas Fashion Island complex at 1000 San Joaquin Plaza opened in 2017 as one of Orange County's premier luxury apartment communities. The 524-unit community sits on approximately 16 acres and features Italian-inspired Palladian architecture with resort-style amenities including pools, a clubhouse, yoga studio, and resident lounges. It has operated at or near full occupancy since opening.

Phase 2 expands that community onto the adjacent 2.2-acre site at 800 San Clemente Drive, where the Irvine Company demolished a four-story, 842-space parking garage. The new building will be five stories and contain 184 apartments across approximately 225,000 square feet of residential space, for an average unit size of roughly 1,220 square feet. Two subterranean parking levels will provide 287 dedicated spaces.

Residents of Phase 2 will have full access to the existing Phase 1 amenities: pools, the clubhouse, yoga studio, and resident lounges. Phase 2 will also add its own dedicated amenities including a pool, sauna, fitness center, coworking areas, and outdoor courtyards.

Combined, the two phases will total 708 units at Villas Fashion Island, making it one of the largest luxury apartment communities in Newport Beach and among the largest in Orange County.

Project Snapshot: Villas Fashion Island Phase 2

Address: 800 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach
Building: 5 stories, approximately 225,000 sq ft
Units: 184 luxury apartments
Avg unit size: approximately 1,220 sq ft
Parking: 2-level subterranean, 287 spaces
Demolition began: December 2025
Construction start: May 2026
Expected completion: early 2028
Combined Phase 1 + Phase 2 total: 708 units

No Public Hearing Required: How PC-56 Works

One of the most notable aspects of this project is how it was approved. Unlike the Related California towers, which required a Planning Commission hearing and are now subject to City Council appeals, the Irvine Company's Phase 2 project moved forward through an entirely administrative process. No Planning Commission hearing. No City Council vote. City staff reviewed and signed off.

That is possible because of the North Newport Center Planned Community zoning, formally known as PC-56. The Irvine Company worked with the city to establish PC-56 as a zoning framework that pre-approves development standards for residential and commercial uses in Newport Center. Projects that meet those pre-established standards can be approved administratively by planning staff without a public hearing, as long as they fall within the parameters already set.

Oscar Orozco, an associate planner with the City of Newport Beach, described the project's purpose to the Orange County Business Journal: "This project takes a site that wasn't serving a specific use and turns it into housing that helps meet the city's needs."

The PC-56 framework was updated in March 2025 when the Newport Beach Planning Commission voted 5-0 to approve amendments that vested the Irvine Company's right to build up to 1,500 dwelling units within Newport Center. The amendments also adjusted building height limits at Fashion Island, Block 100, and San Joaquin Plaza, modified parking standards for residential uses, and updated signage and open space requirements. The Irvine Company requested all of those amendments as part of setting up a long-term residential development program across Newport Center.

The 800 San Clemente Drive project is the first major residential project to move through the PC-56 administrative track under the updated framework.

Part of a 1,500-Unit Newport Center Master Plan

The 184 units at 800 San Clemente Drive represent only the first phase of a much larger residential buildout by the Irvine Company within Newport Center. Under the PC-56 development agreement, the company holds vested rights to construct up to 1,500 residential units across various sites within the planned community zoning district.

Other Irvine Company residential projects in various stages of planning and approval in Newport Center include Block 100 at 100 to 190 Newport Center Drive, which has been proposed at approximately 600 to 700 apartments and would involve converting an existing low-rise office campus into a new podium-style residential building. Additional sites within Newport Center are being evaluated under the same 1,500-unit vested rights framework.

Taken together, the Irvine Company's Newport Center residential program represents a deliberate, long-term strategy to transform what has historically been a daytime office and retail district into a live-work residential enclave. Newport Beach planners have actively encouraged that shift. The city's state-mandated housing target of 4,845 units for the 2021 to 2029 planning cycle creates pressure to add residential density in areas with existing infrastructure, and Newport Center fits that description better than almost anywhere else in the city.

The Irvine Company's approach is distinct from other developers in the pipeline because the company owns the land and controls the pace of development. It does not need to acquire sites, negotiate with landowners, or structure complex financing arrangements. It executes on a timeline of its own choosing, which is why the 800 San Clemente project moved from demolition permit to construction start in roughly five months.

What Will Phase 2 Rents Be?

The Irvine Company has not released pricing for the new building. Phase 2 is expected to open in early 2028, and a leasing program will likely be announced six to nine months before completion.

The existing Phase 1 community opened in 2017 with starting rents of approximately $3,450 per month for a one-bedroom unit and up to $8,600 per month for a two-bedroom loft. By 2026, asking rents at Villas Fashion Island start at approximately $5,195 per month, reflecting nearly a decade of appreciation in the Newport Beach luxury rental market.

Phase 2 rents are expected to price at or above current Phase 1 rates, depending on unit mix and finish level. Applying current Newport Center market conditions to the disclosed average unit size of approximately 1,220 square feet produces the following estimates for 2028:

  • One-bedroom units: approximately $4,800 to $6,000 per month
  • Two-bedroom units: approximately $7,000 to $9,500 per month
  • Estimated annual revenue at full occupancy (184 units): roughly $14 million to $18 million per year

These are market-based estimates. The Irvine Company has not disclosed the unit mix (number of one-bedroom vs. two-bedroom vs. larger units) for Phase 2.

There are no income-restricted units in Phase 2. The Irvine Company's development agreement with the city requires 105 total affordable units across Newport Center by 2029, but those are expected to be located in other Newport Center projects within the 1,500-unit portfolio.

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What This Means for Newport Beach's Tax Base

The Irvine Company has owned the Newport Center land for decades. Under California's Proposition 13, that means the land is assessed at a historically low base value, far below its current market value, because it has never been sold to a new owner at current prices. The parking structure itself had minimal assessed value as a commercial improvement.

Converting 225,000 square feet of new residential construction onto that site does trigger a reassessment of the improvement value, meaning the new building is assessed at its construction cost. For a five-story, 184-unit luxury apartment building in Newport Beach, construction cost alone is likely in the range of $80 million to $110 million. Adding that to the existing low land assessment would produce a new combined assessed value in that range.

Annual property tax implications at 1.1% of an estimated $100 million combined assessed value:

  • Total annual property tax: approximately $1.1 million
  • Newport Beach's share at roughly 17 cents per dollar: approximately $187,000 per year

That figure is relatively modest compared to the for-sale condo projects in this series, because the Irvine Company retains the apartments as a long-term investment rather than selling individual units. When units sell, Prop 13 resets each unit's assessed value to the sale price. When units rent, no such reset occurs. The building is assessed once at construction cost and then appreciates only 2% per year under Prop 13 rules.

The larger fiscal contribution to Newport Beach from this project is indirect: more residents in Newport Center means more spending at Fashion Island, more sales tax revenue, and greater justification for continued investment in the surrounding commercial district. The Irvine Company benefits from that flywheel too, since it owns Fashion Island and most of the surrounding retail.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is being built at 800 San Clemente Drive?

The Irvine Company is replacing a former four-story, 842-space parking garage with a five-story, 184-unit luxury apartment building. Construction began in May 2026 and is expected to wrap up by early 2028. The new building will join the existing 524-unit Villas Fashion Island community at 1000 San Joaquin Plaza, bringing the combined total to 708 units.

How did this get approved without a public hearing?

The project was approved administratively by city planning staff under the North Newport Center Planned Community zoning (PC-56). This framework allows the Irvine Company to build housing that meets pre-established design and density standards without going through the Planning Commission or City Council. The 1,500-unit vested right under that framework was confirmed in a 5-0 Planning Commission vote in March 2025.

What will rents be in the new building?

No pricing has been released. The existing Villas Fashion Island community starts at approximately $5,195 per month as of 2026. Phase 2 pricing is expected to be comparable or slightly higher when leasing opens, likely sometime in late 2027 ahead of a 2028 completion.

Are there any affordable units?

Phase 2 at 800 San Clemente Drive is entirely market-rate. The Irvine Company's overall Newport Center development agreement includes an obligation to provide 105 affordable units by 2029, but those units are expected to come through other projects in the company's 1,500-unit Newport Center portfolio.

How does this fit into the Irvine Company's larger Newport Center plan?

The 184 units at 800 San Clemente represent the first completed phase of the Irvine Company's 1,500-unit residential buildout across Newport Center. Additional projects, including a proposed 600-plus unit conversion of the Block 100 office campus at 100 to 190 Newport Center Drive, are moving through planning under the same PC-56 framework.

Renting vs. Buying in Newport Beach

The addition of 708 luxury rental units at Villas Fashion Island, combined with high-rise for-sale condominiums from Related California and Ritz-Carlton Residences, is creating a range of options in Newport Center that did not exist before. Whether you are deciding between renting in Newport Center or purchasing a home in the surrounding community, I can help you understand the market and what makes sense for your situation.

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July 8, 2026

Ritz-Carlton Residences Newport Beach: A 22-Story Luxury Tower Coming to the VEA Campus

By Eric Engelbert

A Golf Course View That Became a $216 Million Deal

Newport Beach is in the middle of the most significant residential construction wave in its history. Multiple high-rise towers are either approved or under construction in Newport Center simultaneously, a moment that will permanently reshape the skyline of one of California's wealthiest coastal cities. This is the second in a series of individual project profiles covering each development in the pipeline.

This one starts on a golf course.

In the middle of 2020, Kevin Martin and Todd Pickup of Eagle Four Partners were playing a round at Newport Beach Country Club. From somewhere on the front nine, they looked up at the hotel across Newport Center Drive: the 532-room Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa, owned by Host Hotels and Resorts. The hotel was sitting largely empty during the pandemic. Host had planned a $30 million renovation that no longer made sense. An unsolicited offer was made. It was accepted.

That moment on the golf course set in motion a sequence of events that will deliver a 22-story Ritz-Carlton branded residential tower to Newport Center, a private non-profit affordable housing fund for Newport Beach, and one of the most unusual development stories in Orange County real estate history.

From Marriott to VEA to Ritz: The Full Property History

The property at 900 Newport Center Drive has served Newport Beach as a major full-service hotel for decades. As the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa, it operated 532 rooms and was long considered the anchor hospitality property of Newport Center, convenient to Fashion Island and the surrounding office and retail complex.

Host Hotels and Resorts, the publicly traded REIT that owned the property, had proposed a roughly $30 million renovation before the pandemic disrupted the hospitality industry. When Eagle Four Partners and Lyon Living made their unsolicited offer in mid-2020, Host accepted. The transaction closed in November 2020 at $216 million, or approximately $406,000 per room, in an off-market deal.

The new owners invested substantially more than Host's planned renovation budget, going well beyond a refresh to reinvent the property entirely. In 2022, the hotel reopened as VEA Newport Beach, a Marriott Resort and Spa. VEA is not an official Marriott brand but one that Eagle Four created with Marriott's full approval. The entire campus, including the future residential tower, remains under the Marriott umbrella and is managed by Debbie Snavely, the longtime general manager of the property and a former Newport Beach Citizen of the Year.

The VEA name and identity were deliberately designed to give the property a more independent, resort-like character. It was also designed from the beginning with the expectation that the Ritz-Carlton Residences would eventually be built alongside it, completing an integrated luxury campus.

A three-story hotel tower on the property, located near self-parking, will be demolished to create the footprint for the 22-story residential building. The Marriott's original 532-room count will be reduced as a result of both the VEA renovation and the Ritz residential conversion.

The Project: 22 Stories, Newport Center's First Branded Residences

The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Newport Beach will rise approximately 295 to 300 feet on the VEA campus at 900 Newport Center Drive. The 22-story tower will be entirely residential, with no hotel rooms or short-term rental units. It will stand as a separate building from the VEA hotel but connected as one integrated luxury campus.

The project was approved for up to 159 residential units. Current design work by architect MVE Partners reflects approximately 109 units, suggesting the final program may deliver fewer but larger residences than the original maximum. Residential units will be located between the second and 22nd floors, with larger homes and penthouse-level residences at the upper floors.

Amenities will include resort-style pool and spa with lounge seating, a dedicated gym and fitness facility, locker rooms, spa treatment rooms, meeting rooms, legendary Ritz-Carlton concierge services operating separately from VEA staff, a billiards and library room, and private food and beverage service for residents. Outdoor amenities include a private garden, walking paths, and a dog relief area. A new five-level, 408-space subterranean parking structure will be constructed beneath the residential building.

Views from upper floors will encompass Fashion Island, the Newport Beach Country Club golf course directly across the street, Newport Harbor, and the Pacific Ocean. On clear days the Catalina Island silhouette will be visible from the higher floors.

Project Snapshot: Ritz-Carlton Residences Newport Beach

Address: 900 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach
Tower: 22 stories / approximately 295 to 300 feet
Units: up to 159 approved; current design approximately 109
Type: Ritz-Carlton branded luxury condominiums
Parking: 5-level subterranean, 408 spaces
Affordable housing: none (city fee structure applies)
Campus partner: VEA Newport Beach, a Marriott Resort and Spa

Eagle Four Partners and Lyon Living

Eagle Four Partners is a Newport Beach-based real estate investment and development firm founded by Kevin Martin and Todd Pickup. The firm focuses on hospitality and mixed-use assets in Southern California. Kory Kramer has been active in the development and community relations side of the Newport Beach project. The name "Eagle Four" is widely associated with the Newport Beach golf community that gave the firm its start-of-deal backstory.

Lyon Living is an Irvine-based residential developer with a long track record across Orange County and Southern California. The firm is led by Peter Zak. Lyon Living has been active in both market-rate luxury residential and mixed-use development, making it a natural partner for Eagle Four on a project that blends hotel and branded residential components.

Together, the two firms brought a distinctly local Orange County perspective to what could have been a transaction handled by an out-of-state institutional buyer. Their willingness to invest significantly beyond Host's planned renovation budget, and to pursue a creative residential entitlement alongside the hotel renovation, is what produced the Ritz-Carlton Residences project.

The architectural firm is MVE Partners, a Newport Beach-based practice with a long portfolio of high-rise residential and mixed-use projects in Orange County and beyond. MVE's design for the Residences draws from the California Post Modernism tradition that William Pereira established when he designed Fashion Island in the 1960s. The building incorporates nautical-inspired forms and yacht-influenced detailing, with a heavy emphasis on indoor/outdoor spaces suited to the Southern California climate. Structural engineering is by Glotman Simpson.

Council Policy K-4: The Law That Made This Possible

The Ritz-Carlton Residences would not exist without Council Policy K-4, a Newport Beach city policy adopted in March 2021 that created a legal pathway for hotel-to-residential conversions. Before K-4, converting hotel rooms to residential condominiums in Newport Beach would have required a general plan amendment or similar entitlement action. K-4 streamlined that process under specific conditions.

The policy was adopted precisely because Newport Beach needed creative approaches to its state-mandated housing production requirements. Under California's Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), Newport Beach was assigned a target of 4,845 new units for the 2021-2029 planning cycle. Hotel-to-residential conversion offered a way to add residential units without consuming developable land that might otherwise be needed for other uses.

The Ritz-Carlton Residences project was one of the first and most prominent applications of K-4. The Newport Beach Planning Commission approved the project in May 2022, with Councilwoman Joy Brenner playing a key role in building support. The project proceeded through approvals smoothly, in part because the hotel-to-residential conversion framework gave the Planning Commission a clear policy basis for approval.

Under the K-4 structure, the developers pay the city $100,000 per residential unit, of which $65,000 per unit flows to a private, non-profit affordable housing trust fund established as part of the deal. At the approved maximum of 159 units, total city payments would reach $15.9 million, with $10.35 million directed to affordable housing. At 109 units, the figures would be $10.9 million total and $7.09 million to the affordable housing fund.

Why SPON Said Yes

SPON, which stands for Still Protecting Our Newport, is Newport Beach's most active residents advocacy group and one that has historically opposed large-scale development in the city. The group's endorsement of the Ritz-Carlton Residences project was considered significant precisely because it was unexpected.

SPON's leaders at the time of the approval, Jean Watt, Charles Klobe, and Nancy Scarbrough, worked directly with Eagle Four's Kory Kramer and Lyon Living's Peter Zak to structure a deal that addressed the affordable housing dimension in a meaningful way. The creation of the private, non-profit housing trust fund was the key concession that brought SPON to yes.

The trust fund model offered Newport Beach something that a standard in-lieu fee payment does not: a dedicated, locally controlled pool of capital specifically targeting affordable housing. Rather than payments disappearing into the general fund, the structure was designed to keep affordable housing funding separate and focused.

Gary Sherwin, then President and CEO of Visit Newport Beach, described the deal at the time as demonstrating "that even in this polarized era, good things can still get done." The combination of a world-class hospitality brand, local developers, a rare SPON endorsement, and a creative affordable housing structure made the Ritz-Carlton Residences project one of the more closely watched approvals in Newport Beach's recent planning history.

What Will the Residences Cost?

No pricing has been publicly released. Eagle Four Partners and Lyon Living have not opened a sales program as of July 2026. Given that the project appears to still be in the pre-construction or early construction phase, a formal sales launch is likely at least 12 to 18 months away.

What the Ritz-Carlton brand commands in comparable markets gives a useful pricing framework. Ritz-Carlton Residences in other major US markets, including Miami, Los Angeles, and Honolulu, have sold at ranges from approximately $3 million for smaller residences to $15 million or more for larger or penthouse-level units. Newport Beach pricing is expected to be competitive with those markets, given the city's overall luxury market positioning and the specific combination of Fashion Island proximity, Newport Harbor views, and a brand that carries some of the highest recognition in hospitality globally.

If the final unit count is approximately 109 (as the current MVE Partners design reflects), average unit sizes would be larger than originally planned, which would push average pricing higher. At a projected range of $3 million to $15 million per unit across 109 residences, the total project sellout could reach $500 million to $750 million or more.

These are market-based estimates only. The developers have not released floor plans, unit mix, or pricing guidance.

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Tax Impact on Newport Beach

The 2020 acquisition of the property for $216 million triggered a Proposition 13 reassessment at that purchase price. The hotel is currently generating property tax based on its $216 million acquisition value, contributing meaningfully to the city's tax base already. Newport Beach receives roughly 16 to 17 cents of each property tax dollar, so the hotel's annual contribution to the city is in the range of $370,000 to $400,000 per year from the property tax alone, before lodging tax (TOT) is considered.

When the residential tower is completed and units are sold, each condominium will be reassessed at its sale price, layering new residential property tax on top of the existing hotel assessment.

At an estimated average sale price of $6 million per unit across 109 condominiums:

  • New residential assessed value: approximately $654 million
  • Annual residential property tax at 1.1%: approximately $7.2 million
  • Newport Beach's share: approximately $1.2 million per year in recurring city revenue from the residential component alone

Combined with the hotel's existing property tax contribution, transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue from the VEA, and the one-time city payment of up to $15.9 million under the K-4 fee structure, the full VEA campus represents one of the more complex and multi-layered fiscal contributions of any single property in Newport Beach.

Development fees and building permit fees for a tower of this scale would add additional one-time revenue to the city at the time of construction. No formal fiscal impact analysis for the residential component has been publicly released.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where will the Ritz-Carlton Residences be located?

The tower will be built on the campus of the VEA Newport Beach at 900 Newport Center Drive. A three-story hotel tower on the property near self-parking will be demolished to create the footprint for the new 22-story residential building.

Who are the developers?

Eagle Four Partners, led by Kevin Martin and Todd Pickup, and Lyon Living, led by Peter Zak, are the co-developers. Both firms are based in Orange County. They jointly acquired the Newport Beach Marriott from Host Hotels and Resorts in November 2020 for $216 million.

How many units will there be and what will they cost?

The project was approved for up to 159 units. Architect MVE Partners' current portfolio shows approximately 109 units, suggesting a revised and likely more spacious final unit mix. No pricing has been announced. Based on comparable Ritz-Carlton Residences in other markets, pricing is expected to range from roughly $3 million to $15 million or more per unit.

Why did SPON support this project?

SPON endorsed the project because it includes a private, non-profit affordable housing trust fund funded by $65,000 per residential unit from the developers. SPON leaders Jean Watt, Charles Klobe, and Nancy Scarbrough worked directly with the development team to structure the affordable housing commitment before lending their support.

What is the current construction status?

The Newport Beach Planning Commission approved the project in May 2022. As of mid-2026, the project was in the pre-construction or early construction phase. The original estimated completion of 2025 has been pushed back. A realistic completion window, depending on when construction is in full swing, is 2027 to 2028.

Watching the Newport Beach Market?

The Ritz-Carlton Residences are one of more than a dozen major residential projects reshaping Newport Center and the broader Newport Beach real estate market over the next several years. If you want to understand how these new developments affect pricing and inventory in the surrounding market, or if you are considering a purchase in Newport Beach now, I can help.

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July 8, 2026

Related California Big Newport Towers: 150 Luxury Condos Coming to Newport Center

Posted July 8, 2026 | Updated August 29, 2026 | By Eric Engelbert | Updated as the project moves forward.

August 2026 Update: All Local Appeals Cleared

When this blog was first published in July 2026, the Newport Beach City Council appeal hearing had not yet been scheduled. That was an error on our part. The City Council had already voted unanimously on April 28, 2026 to deny the appeal filed by preservation and environmental opponents, including the group Save Our Theater. The vote upheld the Planning Commission's March 6, 2026 unanimous approval and allows Related California to move forward with the project. Opponents had up to 35 days from that vote to file a court or CEQA challenge. No court challenge has been publicly reported, meaning that window closed approximately June 2, 2026 without further action. As of August 2026, the project has cleared every local approval hurdle. The approvals section and FAQ below have been updated to reflect the correct timeline.

Orange County's Skyline Moment

In the early 2000s, visitors to Berlin often remarked that roughly a third of the world's construction cranes were operating in a single city. Germany was rebuilding its reunified capital in real time. New towers, transit corridors, and entire urban districts were rising simultaneously. The cranes became the signature of a city transforming itself in a single generation. That concentration of building activity permanently remade Berlin's skyline and its identity.

Something similar is beginning to happen in Newport Beach.

A coastal city that has long resisted high-density residential development is now facing the most concentrated wave of luxury high-rise construction in its history. Within roughly a five-year window, twin 22-story towers from Related California, a 22-story Ritz-Carlton branded residential building, and more than 700 additional units from the Irvine Company are all either approved or under construction in Newport Center, the urban village at the geographic heart of Orange County. Additional projects are moving through approvals in the Airport Area and along Mariners' Mile.

The skyline of Newport Beach is about to change permanently. The Big Newport Towers from Related California are the most visible symbol of that change. And the story of how they came to be approved begins not with a developer or a planning document, but with a family and a movie theater that opened in 1969.

57 Years on Newport Center Drive

James Edwards Sr. opened the Big Newport on February 11, 1969 with a screening of Olivia Hussey in "Romeo and Juliet." It was the fourth theater in his growing Edwards Theatres chain and quickly became its flagship. The house had 1,130 seats and a 71-foot screen, one of the last great single-screen movie palaces built in Southern California before the multiplex era arrived in the 1970s. The Art Deco marquee at the front of the building became a recognizable landmark in Newport Center, visible from across Newport Center Drive.

Edwards Sr. ran the chain with a personal touch. He was known to greet patrons at matinees himself. He came to work daily at the theater's second-story offices until his death at the age of 90 in 1997. The Big Newport was not simply an investment property. It was an expression of the Edwards family's roots in Newport Beach, where they had lived for more than 70 years.

After Edwards Sr. died, the chain struggled financially. The family filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000 and formally relinquished the Edwards Theatres brand in 2001. Regal Cinemas acquired the operating business at the Big Newport in 2002 and has run the now six-screen theater ever since. Throughout that transition, the Edwards family retained ownership of the land and the building at 300 Newport Center Drive, as well as the adjacent property at 210 Newport Center Drive where a fitness facility operated.

Over the decades following, the Big Newport became more than a neighborhood theater. The Newport Beach Film Festival held screenings there annually, giving the venue a film culture connection unusual for a suburban multiplex. That history made the prospect of demolition particularly contentious when it became public.

Jim Edwards, son of the founder, publicly endorsed Related California's proposal at the Planning Commission hearing. "Nationally, theater attendance has declined every year for the last 20 years, and of course, Covid decimated the business, which hasn't recovered since," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Unfortunately, Big Newport is not immune to those conditions." He added: "With the changing trends, our family wants to honor dad's passion to create something special on this property."

The Edwards family had been interviewing prospective developers for some time before selecting Related California. No purchase price for the 4.17-acre site has been publicly disclosed.

The Project: Twin Towers at the Center of Orange County

Related California's approved plan calls for demolishing both existing structures at 210 and 300 Newport Center Drive and replacing them with two 22-story residential towers. At approximately 270 feet each, they will be among the tallest buildings in Newport Beach and taller than anything currently on the Newport Center skyline.

The development will contain 150 condominiums in two- and four-bedroom configurations, with penthouses at the top floors of each tower. Floor plans range from approximately 2,100 square feet on the lower end to 6,400 square feet for the largest penthouse residences. The project also includes live-work offices available for purchase by residents, along with ground-floor retail space and a cafe.

The towers share a connected podium base with shared amenities, parking, and common areas. No affordable housing units are included in the project. The site sits directly across Newport Center Drive from Fashion Island, Newport Beach's premier open-air shopping and dining destination. Upper-floor residences will have unobstructed views of Fashion Island's rooftops, the Back Bay estuary, the Santa Ana Mountains, and on clear days, the Pacific Ocean.

Project Snapshot: Related California Big Newport Towers

Location: 210 and 300 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach
Towers: 2 buildings, each 22 stories / approximately 270 feet
Units: 150 condominiums (2BR and 4BR + penthouses)
Unit sizes: approximately 2,100 to 6,400 sq ft
Also includes: live-work offices, retail, cafe
Affordable housing: none
Site: 4.17 acres

Who Is Related California?

Related California is an Irvine-based affiliate of Related Companies, one of the largest private real estate development firms in the United States. The parent company was founded by Stephen Ross in New York. Its signature project is Hudson Yards on Manhattan's west side, a roughly $25 billion mixed-use development on 28 acres that is one of the largest private real estate projects in American history.

Related California CEO Gino Canori leads the California operation. The firm has developed projects across the state, including in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and the Inland Empire. In Orange County, Related is also involved in Related Bristol in Santa Ana, a large mixed-income housing development near John Wayne Airport that is part of the city's broader effort to add workforce and affordable housing near transit.

The Big Newport Towers would be Related California's highest-profile luxury for-sale product in Southern California. The firm brings significant capital, relationships, and institutional credibility to a project that has now cleared all local approval hurdles and is moving toward the permitting phase.

No lender for the construction financing has been publicly identified. No architectural firm has been named in public records or news coverage to date. Both are expected to become known as the project moves from entitlement into construction documents and permitting.

Approvals, Appeals, and the Path to Construction

The Newport Beach Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the Related California project on March 6, 2026. The hearing included extensive public testimony. Jim Edwards III spoke in favor of the project on behalf of his family, a notable moment given the cultural weight of the theater's history in the community.

Environmental advocates and historic preservation groups, including the community group Save Our Theater, filed appeals with the Newport Beach City Council following the Planning Commission vote. Those appeals centered on environmental impact concerns and the loss of a structure with recognized historic and cultural significance.

The Newport Beach City Council held its hearing on April 28, 2026 and voted unanimously to deny the appeal, upholding the Planning Commission's approval. Councilmember Robyn Grant noted during the hearing that the project "is in character with already developed Irvine Co. projects and is pretty well serviced by the existing infrastructure." Opponents had 35 days from the vote to file a court or CEQA legal challenge. No such challenge has been publicly reported, and that window closed approximately June 2, 2026. The project has now cleared all local approval hurdles.

James Edwards III confirmed at the April 28 council hearing that the theater will close no later than June 30, 2027, and possibly earlier if Regal exercises its ability to exit the license agreement sooner. The theater remains open as of August 2026.

Once Related California secures construction financing and submits for building permits, the permitting process for a project of this scale typically takes six to twelve months. Construction itself is expected to take 30 to 36 months. If permits are issued by mid-2027, a realistic completion window would be 2029 to 2030. Pre-sales, which commonly launch before or during construction for projects of this type, could open as early as late 2026 or 2027. No sales program has been announced.

There is also a broader political context. Newport Beach voters will decide in November 2026 whether to adopt the Responsible Housing Initiative, which would reduce the city's state-mandated housing target from more than 8,000 units to approximately 2,900. The Related California towers, already approved under the existing housing element, would not be affected by that ballot measure either way. But the initiative's outcome will shape what gets built next across Newport Center and the Airport Area.

What Will the Condos Sell For?

No pricing has been announced. Related California has not opened a sales program or released pre-sales information as of August 2026. With all local approvals now secured, a sales launch could come within the next 12 to 18 months, likely timed alongside construction financing and the start of demolition.

What the broader Newport Beach luxury market suggests is a pricing range that would be among the highest ever offered in the city at scale. Existing luxury condominiums in Newport Coast and Crystal Cove have traded at $2,000 to $4,000 per square foot in recent years. The Big Newport Towers offer a fundamentally different product: urban luxury in a true high-rise format at the geographic center of Orange County, with panoramic views unavailable anywhere else in Newport Beach.

Applying a conservative range of $2,500 to $3,500 per square foot to the disclosed unit sizes produces the following estimates:

  • Two-bedroom residences (approx. 2,100 sq ft): roughly $5 million to $7 million
  • Four-bedroom residences (approx. 3,500 to 4,000 sq ft): roughly $9 million to $14 million
  • Penthouses (up to 6,400 sq ft): potentially $15 million to $30 million or more
  • Total project sellout at 150 units: potentially $1 billion to $1.5 billion

These are market-based estimates, not Related California's pricing. The actual numbers will depend on finish quality, view premiums by floor, and market conditions at the time of the sales launch.

If you want to be notified when sales information becomes public, or if you are interested in comparable properties available now in Newport Beach or Newport Coast, reach out directly.

Browse Newport Beach Homes and Condos for Sale

What This Means for Newport Beach's Property Tax Base

California's Proposition 13 ties annual property taxes to the assessed value at the time of the most recent sale, with increases capped at 2% per year. A property that has been owned by the same family since 1969 and never fully sold is almost certainly assessed at a small fraction of its current market value. The Edwards family's 4.17-acre parcel at the center of Newport Beach likely generates a modest amount of annual property tax under Prop 13's rules.

When Related California's project is completed and 150 condominiums are sold, each unit will be reassessed at its sale price. That triggers a full market-value reassessment for each unit the moment it closes escrow.

At an estimated average sale price of $8 million per unit across 150 condominiums:

  • Total assessed value: approximately $1.2 billion
  • Annual property tax at the standard 1.1% effective rate: approximately $13 million
  • Newport Beach's share of the 1% base rate: roughly 16 to 17 cents per tax dollar, or approximately $2 million per year in recurring city revenue

That represents a substantial and permanent increase in Newport Beach's annual general fund from a single 4.17-acre site. The city also collects one-time building permit fees based on construction value, which for a project of this scale could total several million dollars. Development impact fees, charged on a per-unit basis to offset infrastructure and public facility costs, would apply as well. The city has not publicly released a fee estimate for this specific project.

For context, Newport Beach's total annual property tax revenue from all sources is in the range of $60 to $80 million per year. This single project, once sold and on the tax rolls at market value, would represent a meaningful addition to that base from one corner of one intersection.

The Affordable Housing Question: Newport Beach, County, or State?

The Big Newport Towers include no affordable housing. That is not unusual for a market-rate luxury project in Newport Center. The bigger question, which comes up with nearly every Newport Beach development, is how affordable housing income limits are actually set for this city.

The answer surprises most people: Newport Beach uses the Orange County Area Median Income (AMI), as published annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It does not use Newport Beach's own household income levels, which are substantially higher. It does not use a statewide figure.

For 2025, the Orange County AMI for a family of four is $169,200. That is the 100% AMI baseline for all affordable housing programs in Newport Beach and across Orange County.

What that means in practice:

  • Very Low Income (50% AMI): a family of four earning up to $84,600 per year
  • 60% AMI threshold (used for most tax-credit financed units): up to $101,520
  • Low Income (80% AMI): up to $135,360

For rent, HUD-derived caps in Orange County produce these maximum rents on income-restricted units for 2025:

  • 2-bedroom at 50% AMI: approximately $1,903 per month
  • 2-bedroom at 60% AMI: approximately $2,284 per month

Newport Beach market-rate two-bedroom apartments routinely rent for $4,000 to $6,000 or more per month, and for-sale two-bedroom condos trade at $1 million to $5 million or higher. The gap between what "affordable" means by state and federal definition and what is actually attainable in Newport Beach is enormous.

In Newport Center specifically, the Irvine Company's development agreement with the city requires 105 units priced at or below the Very Low or Low Income thresholds to be delivered by 2029, spread across the company's projects in the area. The Related California towers are separate and have no independent affordable housing requirement.

For anyone considering purchasing a home in Newport Beach and trying to understand how affordability programs interact with the market here, I am glad to walk through the details.

Frequently Asked Questions

When will the Big Newport Theater close?

James Edwards III confirmed at the April 28, 2026 City Council hearing that the theater will close no later than June 30, 2027. Regal has expressed interest in exiting the license agreement before that date. The theater is still open as of August 2026. No specific closing date has been announced.

How much will condos at the Big Newport Towers cost?

No pricing has been released. Based on Newport Beach luxury market comparables and the disclosed unit size range of approximately 2,100 to 6,400 square feet, two-bedroom residences are likely to start in the range of $5 million to $7 million. Four-bedroom homes and penthouses could range significantly higher. These are market-based estimates only. No sales program has been announced as of August 2026.

Is there affordable housing in the project?

No. The 150 condominiums are entirely market-rate. Newport Center's broader affordable housing obligation is handled through the Irvine Company's separate development agreement with the city, which requires 105 below-market-rate units by 2029.

What is the status of the appeals?

The Newport Beach City Council voted unanimously on April 28, 2026 to deny the appeal filed by preservation and environmental opponents. The decision upheld the Planning Commission's March 6, 2026 approval. Opponents then had 35 days to file a court or CEQA challenge. No court challenge has been publicly reported. As of August 2026, the project has cleared all local approval hurdles and is moving toward construction permitting.

When will units be available to purchase?

No sales program has been announced. Pre-sales for a high-rise project of this type typically launch during or before construction. If permitting begins in late 2026 or early 2027, a pre-sales opening could occur sometime in 2027. Construction is expected to take 30 to 36 months, putting earliest occupancy in 2029 to 2030.

Will the Responsible Housing Initiative affect this project?

No. The Related California towers were approved under Newport Beach's existing certified Housing Element. The November 2026 ballot measure, if passed, would reduce future housing targets but would not affect projects already approved. Construction would proceed regardless of the ballot outcome.

Looking at Newport Beach Real Estate?

The Big Newport Towers are one of more than a dozen major residential projects reshaping Newport Beach and the surrounding Orange County market over the next five years. Whether you are watching the market, considering a purchase now, or curious about what is coming to the neighborhood, I can help you understand what it means for pricing, inventory, and opportunity.

Browse available properties or schedule a quick call below:

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July 7, 2026

Meritage Homes Is Building 142 New Homes on the Former Trinity Broadcasting Campus in Costa Mesa

By Eric Engelbert

One of the most recognizable buildings in Costa Mesa is gone. The ornate former headquarters of Trinity Broadcasting Network at 3150 Bear Street, with its curved golden staircases, marble interiors, and floor-to-ceiling murals of biblical figures, was demolished in 2025 to make way for something the neighborhood has not seen in decades: brand new for-sale homes. National homebuilder Meritage Homes purchased the 6-acre site in November 2025 for $44.5 million and has city approval to build 142 homes, a mix of townhouses and detached single-family residences, on a site tucked between the 73 and 405 freeways just minutes from South Coast Plaza. Demolition is complete. Construction is expected to begin in 2026. Model homes should be ready by 2027. Here is everything buyers need to know.

From Christian Media Empire to Luxury Event Venue to Housing: The Story of 3150 Bear Street

The building at 3150 Bear Street was originally constructed in 1976 for the Full Gospel Businessman's Fellowship International. Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Costa Mesa-based Christian media company founded by Paul and Jan Crouch in 1973, eventually took over the campus and transformed it into their flagship Southern California headquarters. At its peak, the TBN campus included film studios, a broadcast theater, a power building, and extensive grounds, all rendered in an over-the-top palatial style that made the building one of the most distinctive, and to some residents most polarizing, structures in Orange County. Golden staircases, mirrored surfaces, marble floors, and larger-than-life murals of angels and biblical figures covered nearly every surface.

TBN vacated the campus in 2017 following the death of founder Paul Crouch. The building sat largely unused as a series of redevelopment proposals came and went. EF Education First, the international education company, purchased the site at one point for $25.5 million. Irvine-based entrepreneur Manny Khoshbin then acquired the property in 2021 for $22 million and reimagined the grounds as "The Palazzo by Khoshbin," leaning into the building's European-inspired aesthetic and operating it as a luxury event venue for weddings and corporate functions.

The Palazzo phase ended when Meritage Homes acquired the site in November 2025 for $44.5 million, nearly double what Khoshbin paid just four years earlier. Demolition crews moved in and the building came down in 2025. A site that spent nearly five decades as a religious broadcasting campus, and then briefly as an event venue, is now a cleared 6-acre pad in one of the most supply-constrained housing markets in California.

Who Is Meritage Homes?

Meritage Homes (NYSE: MTH) is one of the largest publicly traded homebuilders in the United States. Founded in 1985, the company has delivered more than 180,000 homes across ten states including California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. Their Newport Beach office oversees Southern California operations, and the Bear Street project is being developed through their subsidiary MLC Land Holdings Inc.

Meritage is both the developer and the builder on this project. Unlike the large mixed-use projects covered in other recent blogs, where a developer hires separate general contractors and subcontractors for construction, Meritage operates as a vertically integrated homebuilder. They design, build, and sell their own communities. That structure gives buyers a more streamlined purchase experience but also means the project's pace and quality are tied directly to Meritage's own construction teams and standards.

The company has a strong reputation in the energy efficiency space and has received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for Sustained Excellence Award every year since 2013. Their Southern California communities operate under an "Everything's Included" model, meaning features like smart home technology, designer-curated interiors, and energy efficiency upgrades are bundled into the base price rather than offered as costly add-ons. For buyers who have purchased new construction before and felt nickel-and-dimed by upgrade packages, that approach is worth noting.

Meritage has other active projects in the region. They recently acquired a site in Santa Ana to build 86 townhomes, and their Cabrilla at Ponte Vista community in the Los Angeles area gives a preview of the product type and community feel they bring to urban infill sites in Southern California.

142 For-Sale Homes: Townhouses, Singles, and 7 Affordable Units

The approved project calls for 122 townhouses and 20 detached single-family homes, totaling 142 residences across the 6-acre site. This is for-sale ownership product, not apartments. In a Costa Mesa market where new for-sale inventory has been extremely limited, that distinction matters significantly for buyers who want to own rather than rent.

Unit sizes span a meaningful range. The smallest homes are two-bedroom, two-bathroom configurations at approximately 1,000 to 1,062 square feet, designed as entry-level ownership opportunities within the community. The largest are four-bedroom, three-bathroom homes reaching up to approximately 2,400 square feet, competing directly with existing single-family resale inventory in the area. The townhouse product is described as four-story stacked flats, while the 20 single-family homes are two-story detached structures.

7 of the 142 homes are designated for very low-income buyers, satisfying the city's affordable housing requirement for the rezoning from commercial to high-density residential. The city council approved that rezoning on August 5, 2025, clearing the final entitlement hurdle and enabling Meritage to close on the purchase three months later.

No official community name or pricing has been released as of this writing. Meritage typically announces pricing closer to the opening of model homes. Given the land cost of $44.5 million across 142 homes, the land component alone works out to approximately $313,000 per home before a single nail is driven. Add construction costs, financing, sales and marketing, and profit margin, and the finished homes will reflect that math in their asking prices.

$22 Million to $44.5 Million in Four Years: What the Land Price Says About Pricing

The chain of ownership at 3150 Bear Street is a useful window into how land values drive new home pricing in Orange County. When Manny Khoshbin acquired the site in 2021 for $22 million, he was buying a unique commercial property with an unusual building and uncertain redevelopment potential. When Meritage paid $44.5 million in 2025, they were paying for entitled residential land with city approval already in hand for 142 homes. The price difference, more than $22 million in four years, reflects the value that entitlements add to raw land in a constrained California market.

At $44.5 million for 6 acres, Meritage paid roughly $7.4 million per acre, or about $313,000 per approved home in land cost alone. That figure provides a floor for thinking about what finished homes at this project will need to sell for. Meritage's typical construction cost for townhome and single-family product in Southern California runs in the range of $200 to $300 per square foot for the structural build, before soft costs, financing, and overhead. A 1,500-square-foot home at those build costs adds another $300,000 to $450,000 on top of the land allocation. By that rough math, entry-level pricing at this project is likely to start in the $700,000 to $900,000 range, with larger four-bedroom homes potentially reaching $1.2 million and above.

Those are estimates based on comparable infill new construction in Costa Mesa and surrounding cities. Meritage sets its own pricing based on market conditions at the time of model home opening, which is currently projected for 2027. By that point, interest rate conditions and the broader Costa Mesa resale market will both influence where they land on pricing.

Demolition, Abatement, and What Happened to the Building

No specific environmental contamination or soil remediation requirements have been disclosed in public filings or media coverage for this site. The project is proceeding as a standard residential infill development on a site that was previously used for commercial and media production purposes.

That said, the building at 3150 Bear Street was constructed in 1976. Commercial structures built before 1980 routinely contain asbestos-containing materials in ceiling tiles, pipe insulation, floor tiles, and roofing, as well as lead-based paint throughout. California law requires a thorough survey and licensed abatement of those materials before demolition can proceed. That work almost certainly occurred before the wrecking crews moved in, though no public disclosure of the scope or cost of that abatement has been reported. The demolition itself was completed in 2025, and the site is now cleared for construction.

The building's demolition was covered by several Christian media publications and drew notable attention from communities with ties to TBN. The structure had a devoted following among people who associated it with decades of religious broadcasting history. Its loss also drew little mourning from others who viewed it as an architectural outlier in an otherwise residential and commercial neighborhood. Whatever one's feelings about the building, it is gone, and the cleared site is now among the most straightforward paths to new homeownership in Costa Mesa in recent memory.

What Bear Street Means for Costa Mesa Buyers

New for-sale homes in Costa Mesa are rare. The city is largely built out, and most of the residential transactions in Costa Mesa involve resale homes ranging from older ranch-style singles to newer condos and townhome communities. A 142-unit new construction community from a national builder on an infill site this close to South Coast Plaza and the 405/73 interchange is not something that comes along often.

For buyers who want the advantages of new construction, including builder warranties, energy-efficient systems, modern layouts, and the ability to customize finishes, this project fills a gap in the Costa Mesa market that has been empty for years. The two-bedroom entry-level units will appeal to first-time buyers and downsizers who want a manageable footprint in a well-located community. The four-bedroom configurations will draw families who want something larger without leaving the city.

The location itself is a strong selling point. Bear Street sits between the 73 Toll Road and the 405 Freeway, giving residents easy access to Newport Beach, Irvine, and the broader South County job market. South Coast Plaza, one of the highest-grossing retail centers in the country, is minutes away. The South Coast Collection (SoCo), the high-end design and dining district on Hyland Avenue, is nearby. And for buyers keeping an eye on the larger development picture in this part of Orange County, One Metro West, the 957-unit mixed-use development at 1683 Sunflower Avenue, is also under way nearby, adding a public park, retail, and significant new rental inventory to the same general corridor.

For buyers currently in the resale market, the Bear Street project is worth tracking as a pricing benchmark. When Meritage opens model homes in 2027, their pricing will signal where the new construction market is landing in Costa Mesa and will influence how sellers and buyers in the surrounding resale market calibrate their expectations.

Browse available Costa Mesa homes for sale or explore all Orange County listings at ocrealestateinc.com

New Construction in Costa Mesa Is Coming. Be Ready When It Does.

The Bear Street project is the clearest signal in years that institutional homebuilders see Costa Mesa as a market worth paying a premium to enter. A $44.5 million land purchase for 142 homes is not a speculative bet. It is a calculated commitment from one of the country's largest publicly traded builders. If you are a buyer who wants to be positioned in Costa Mesa before new construction pricing sets a new benchmark, now is the time to understand what existing inventory looks like and where your budget puts you.

Ready to talk about buying in Costa Mesa? Call or text Eric at 949-430-7500 or visit ocrealestateinc.com

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July 6, 2026

Santa Ana's Measure X Is Expiring. Here's What That Means for Your Home and Neighborhood.

By Eric Engelbert

If you have been watching Santa Ana's city council approve one massive development project after another with little resistance, there is a reason. The city is staring at a financial cliff. A voter-approved sales tax surcharge called Measure X, which generates roughly $83 million per year for city services, begins sunsetting in 2029. When it does, Santa Ana loses approximately $30 million in annual revenue almost overnight. By 2039, the tax disappears entirely. With an existing $19 million structural deficit already in place for the 2026-27 fiscal year and a ballot measure to renew the tax heading to voters this November, the city's finances are under more pressure than most residents realize. Understanding Measure X explains a lot about why Santa Ana has been moving with unusual urgency to attract large-scale development, and what the approval of projects like Related Bristol and The Village Santa Ana actually means for the people who live there.

What Is Measure X and What Does It Fund?

Measure X is a 1.5% local sales tax surcharge that Santa Ana voters approved in November 2018. It took effect April 1, 2019, under the full name: the Santa Ana Neighborhood Safety, Homeless Prevention and Essential City Services Enhancement Measure. The name tells you what the city promised voters the money would be used for, and broadly speaking, it has delivered on that promise.

Measure X funds are classified as a general tax, meaning the city council has discretion over how they are allocated each budget cycle rather than the money being locked into a single restricted purpose. In practice, the funds have supported street and pothole repairs, park maintenance, graffiti removal, public safety staffing, homelessness and housing services, senior programs, and after-school programs. These are not optional amenities. They are the baseline services that make a city functional for the people who live in it.

At its peak, Measure X generated approximately $83 million in a single year. For context, that represents a meaningful share of Santa Ana's total general fund budget of roughly $786 million. The services funded by Measure X are visible in daily life: the parks that get maintained, the response times when someone calls 911, the crossing guards at elementary schools, and the youth programs that keep kids engaged after school hours. When that revenue disappears, those are the line items that get cut first.

The Numbers: What Happens When Measure X Sunsets

The timeline is straightforward and the math is unforgiving. Measure X was designed as a temporary measure when voters approved it in 2018. Beginning April 1, 2029, the 1.5% surcharge drops to 1.0%. That step-down costs the city approximately $30 million per year in lost revenue starting in fiscal year 2029-30. The remaining 1.0% portion then phases out entirely by 2039, at which point the full $83 million in annual Measure X revenue is gone.

Santa Ana is already running a $19 million structural deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year, meaning the city spends more than it takes in even before Measure X starts to wind down. City staff has been explicit with council members: without either a voter-approved renewal or deep spending cuts, the deficit will widen dramatically beginning in 2029. Cutting $30 million from an annual budget that already has a $19 million hole in it is not a minor adjustment. It requires eliminating programs and reducing services that residents depend on.

The city's own planning documents acknowledge the problem directly, noting that officials will have to start planning now for the revenue drop by controlling spending, modernizing services, and growing the city's tax base through new development. That last phrase, growing the tax base through new development, is the key to understanding every major project approval the Santa Ana City Council has made in the past two years.

What Has Already Been Cut and What Is on the Table

The budget pressure is not hypothetical. The city has already had to make cuts in the current fiscal year to close a gap that started at $13 million and was ultimately reduced to near zero through a combination of spending reductions and revenue adjustments. The process was painful and public.

City staff put the following items on the chopping block during budget deliberations: art programs, crossing guards at schools, after-school programs, senior services, police radio upgrades, and council member aide positions. Five non-mandated city commissions were dissolved, including the youth commission, the parks and recreation commission, and the arts and culture commission. Ambulance coverage was reduced from a 24-hour unit to a 12-hour unit to save $250,000. The Public Works Department absorbed more than $3 million in cuts. The Police Department absorbed approximately $2 million in reductions, though the department's overall budget still grew year-over-year due to staffing costs.

These are the decisions a city makes when it is managing a deficit before the major fiscal cliff has even arrived. The cuts so far are relatively modest compared to what a $30 million per year revenue drop in 2029 would require. City officials have been candid that if Measure X is not renewed and if new development revenue does not come online at scale, the scope of future cuts would be substantially larger.

The November 2026 Ballot: Santa Ana Voters Face a Decision

City leadership is actively considering placing a measure on the November 2026 ballot to renew the 1.5% sales tax at its current rate. If voters approve renewal, the city buys itself additional time to build a more sustainable revenue base through development and other economic growth strategies. If voters reject renewal, the clock to 2029 begins ticking with no safety net in place.

The political dynamics around a renewal vote are not simple. Measure X passed in 2018 with a clear mandate because voters understood what the money would fund. A renewal campaign will need to make the same case, with the added complication that some critics have argued the city has not been sufficiently disciplined about spending in the years since the tax took effect. A counter-narrative published by New Santa Ana, a local watchdog publication, described the deficit as a spending problem rather than a revenue problem, pointing to the city's $786 million total budget as evidence that the issue is prioritization rather than a genuine shortage of funds.

The debate is more nuanced than either side presents it. Both things can be true: the city could tighten spending meaningfully, and the Measure X sunset could still create a structural gap that spending cuts alone cannot close. Whether voters are willing to extend the tax depends heavily on how the next several months of local political conversation unfolds and how effectively city leadership makes the case for renewal.

As a homeowner or buyer in Santa Ana, this vote directly affects the quality of city services you can expect to receive. The outcome of a November sales tax vote is worth following closely regardless of where you stand on local tax policy.

Why Big Developments Are Part of the City's Fiscal Answer

Even if voters renew Measure X in November 2026, the city's leadership understands that a permanent, structural solution to Santa Ana's revenue challenge requires growing the long-term tax base. That is where the development projects come in, and it is why council votes on Related Bristol and The Village Santa Ana were unanimous despite projects of that scale and density typically generating significant community resistance elsewhere in Orange County.

Consider the numbers side by side. The South Coast Plaza Village site currently generates just over $500,000 per year in property and sales tax revenue for the city. Once The Village Santa Ana is fully built out, that same 17-acre site is projected to generate $5.5 million per year, nearly ten times more. Related Bristol, transforming 41 acres of aging retail on Bristol Street, is projected to generate $500 million in net new revenue to the city over the first 30 years of operation. That averages out to more than $16 million per year in new, permanent, non-sunset revenue flowing from a single project.

Together, these two developments represent a meaningful structural offset to the Measure X cliff. They will not replace the full $83 million overnight. The projects take decades to build out and tax revenue scales with occupancy and economic activity across each phase. But by the time the final tranche of Measure X revenue disappears in 2039, a substantial portion of the revenue gap could be covered by the property taxes, sales taxes, and hotel taxes generated by the new development on Sunflower and Bristol. In just the past six years, Santa Ana's development activity has already added approximately $23 million in ongoing new annual tax revenue. The Related Bristol and Village Santa Ana approvals are the next, larger chapter in that same strategy.

This is not an accident. It is a deliberate fiscal policy, executed through land use decisions. The council members who voted unanimously to approve these projects are not simply urban planning enthusiasts. They are managing a budget problem with the tools available to them.

What Measure X and the Development Pipeline Mean for You

If you own a home in Santa Ana, the Measure X story has direct implications for the quality of services your property taxes and city government support. A well-funded city maintains parks, responds quickly to emergency calls, repairs streets, and invests in the neighborhood infrastructure that protects and improves property values. A city cutting its way through a structural deficit does the opposite. Watching how the November 2026 ballot measure performs, and watching how Related Bristol and Village Santa Ana progress through their construction phases, gives you a real-time read on the fiscal trajectory of the city where your asset is located.

If you are considering buying in Santa Ana, the fiscal picture is more nuanced than a simple positive or negative signal. On one hand, a city with a structural deficit and a sunsetting revenue source carries risk for service quality in the near term. On the other hand, a city that has attracted nearly $5 billion in committed private development investment over the past two years, with 5,300 new homes, a hotel, senior living, and tens of thousands of square feet of retail approved and in progress, is a city that institutional capital has bet on heavily. That level of investment confidence from developers like Related Companies, the firm behind Hudson Yards in New York, and C.J. Segerstrom and Sons, the family that built South Coast Plaza, does not happen in cities without a future. It happens in cities that are being repositioned for the next generation.

The Measure X cliff is a real fiscal challenge. The development pipeline is the city's structural answer. Buyers who understand both of those dynamics are better positioned to make informed decisions about when, where, and at what price to enter the Santa Ana market.

Browse homes for sale in Santa Ana or explore all Orange County listings at ocrealestateinc.com

The Smart Move Is Knowing What Is Coming Before Everyone Else Does

Measure X, the November ballot, Related Bristol, The Village Santa Ana. These are not separate stories. They are one story about a city working through a fiscal transition and making decisions right now that will shape the next 20 years of life in Santa Ana. Buyers and homeowners who understand the full picture are better equipped to make decisions that hold up over time.

Questions about buying or selling in Santa Ana or anywhere in Orange County? Call or text Eric at 949-430-7500 or visit ocrealestateinc.com

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