Hopkins, LNR Target Carson

CARSON, CA-When investors and developers talk about locations that are supply-constrained with high barriers to entry, they are talking about places like the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Cities like Carson and other communities in the South Bay area of Los Angeles have long been infill markets that are built out, with few if any large development parcels available.

No wonder, then, that partners Hopkins Real Estate Group and LNR Property Corp. saw a rare opportunity in a vacant 168-acre development site along the 405 Freeway near an existing retail property called South Bay Pavilion that Hopkins is redeveloping. Hopkins and LNR envisioned a plan to redevelop the former Cal Compact landfill, located along the 405 Freeway between Avalon and Del Amo boulevards, into a mixed-use project called Carson Marketplace that would comprise 1.3 million sf of retail and theater space, restaurants, 1,550 housing units and a 200-room hotel. Such a development would constitute what Dennis Reyling, COO at Hopkins Real Estate Group, calls “a shopping destination for the whole South Bay.”

Such a large project would take years to develop in any case, but the Carson site will take a bit longer because the reason the acreage is vacant is that it once was a landfill and any development there will have to wait for remediation. The joint venture of Hopkins and LNR has now embarked on a development plan that calls for a best-case scenario in which construction begins in mid-2009 at the earliest and the first tenants will be open for business in 2010 or 2011.