Mark IV plans to break ground on a three-story, 40,000-sf medical office building on the site in June 2001, with estimated completion scheduled for March 2002. The project is already 33% pre-leased with South County Orthopedic Specialists as the lead tenant occupying the entire first floor. Ware and Malcolm Architects in Irvine is the project architect with Irvine-based Snyder Langston as the general contractor.

"The three-story building is designed to compliment neighboring Town Centre office commercial and hospitality buildings, while creating a distinct identity that supports its medical professional purpose," says Randy Bosch of Ware and Malcolm. The structure will be Santa Barbara-style architecture, with mission-tile roofed portico and stone-faced columns in the first floor fascade. Parking will be 6.7 cars per thousand sf, with a total of 236 spaces.

H. Gordon MacKenzie, president/CEO of Polygon, says the company bought the land a couple of years ago and implemented a master plan for the project. In addition to the medical building, the project will include a 140-room, 85,000-sf Country Inn by Ayres, a restaurant pad, two corporate office buildings totaling 114,000 sf and a retail center consisting of two buildings with a total of 12,700 sf.

"We're selling the restaurant pad," says Kevin Clark, project director for Town Centre. "We're eventually shutting down and getting out of the development business, but we'll be at the project for another year at least. We've sold all of our other properties."

Besides selling off the land for the medical building, the hotel and the restaurant pad, Polygon sold the two retail buildings as shells. They opened last November and are currently fully leased with Blockbuster Video as the anchor tenant. For now, Polygon will continue to own the office buildings and is planning to move into one of them in the next two weeks.

"The growth in south Orange County has spurred the need for additional medical services and, as such, we anticipate the building to be 100% leased upon completion of construction," says Allen Basso, who along with Brad Rawlins of Lee & Associates' Irvine office, represented Mark IV Capital in the transaction. Listing agent on the Town Centre project is John Gillespie of Newport Commercial Realty Advisors in Tustin.