Irvine Company Adding 1,300 Apartments to Shopping Center

The Irvine Company has received approval to build 1,261 apartments on the Irvine side of the third-largest outdoor shopping mall in Orange County.

The 79-acre site straddles Irvine and Tustin on the Irvine side of The Market Place at 2961 El Camino Real, according to a report in the Orange County Business Journal.

The outdoor shopping center, built in 1988, encompasses more than 120 stores, restaurants, cafes and theaters.

The residential development at The Market Place will replace 200K SF of retail outlets, including a former Hobby Lobby and a Barnes & Noble. A fitness center at the mall will relocate into a former Bed Bath & Beyond store to make way for the new housing.

The developer is planning to reserve 20 percent of the units at the new residential development for affordable housing, with another 60% aimed at households making between $50K and $110K per year, the report said.

Although the new housing is replacing retail space at the outdoor shopping mall, the developer projects that residents will boost spending at the mall by $30M a year.

Mixed-use redevelopments of malls to include housing have been proliferating across the Orange County region in recent months, with plans unveiled for redos at the Brea Mall, MainPlace Mall, Westminster Mall and Laguna Hills Mall.

In February, Simon Property Group unveiled an experiential Urban Village with 380 apartment units, outdoor shops and restaurants that will replace a former Sears complex at Brea Mall.

Urban Village is a rapidly emerging post-pandemic model for the redevelopment of malls into experiential communities, where people can stroll out of their apartments into a neighborhood filled with outdoor shops, restaurants and, of course, a fitness center so the local foot traffic is brisk.

According to plans the mall REIT submitted to the city late last year—which were approved by the Brea Planning Commission in December—Simon is planning this kind of transformation at the Brea Mall, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

The plans call for the redevelopment of nearly 16 acres of the 74-acre mall, a vacant 162K wing formerly occupied by a Sears department store and a Sears Auto Center, which is a separate building in a 7.5-acre parking lot.

The vacant Sears outlets, which have been empty for years will be demolished to make way for the Urban Village, which also will include upgrades to State College Boulevard between Imperial Highway and Brea Mall South.

Brea Mall opened in 1977 anchored by with May Co. and Sears. The Orange County mall featured an ice skating rink in the 1980s that was later converted into a food court. The mall currently is anchored by Nordstrom and generates an estimated $700M in sales, according to the REIT’s 2022 earnings statement.