The City of Hope hospital system plans to build a $1 billion hospital and research facility at a former military airbase in Irvine.
FivePoint Holdings, a spinoff of Lennar Corp., is redeveloping the former 4,700-acre El Toro air base into a planned community called Great Parks Neighborhood, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Duarte-based healthcare provider plans to purchase 11 acres at the neighborhood’s 73-acre commercial component, FivePoint Gateway, the Times reported.
Buying the property and developing the healthcare complex is expected to account for half of City of Hope’s $1 billion budget. In February, the hospital system purchased a medical office building in nearby Newport Beach for $14.2 million.
City of Hope is also expanding in Duarte.
The property includes a 190,000-square-foot office building that will be incorporated into the larger complex that City of Hope looks to open in 2025. A sale could close by the end of 2019 if Irvine officials approve the development plan.
The existing building was built by technology company Broadcom Inc. as part of a larger planned headquarters, but that plan was scrapped after the company was sold in 2016. FivePoint Holdings bought the property back a year later.
Lennar Corp. — which announces quarterly earnings today — is FivePoint Holdings’ biggest shareholder. It spun off the firm in 2009 to oversee Great Parks and a handful of other West Coast development projects, including the 12,000-acre Newhall Ranch community in Valencia.
Lennar purchased the air base in 2005 before it split off FivePoint. The property had been in limbo since the U.S. government decommissioned El Toro in 1999. [LAT] – Dennis Lynch