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Residential
Los Angeles

Irvine Company teams with Irvine for 4,500 proposed apartments

Five infill sites, of which nearly 1K would be affordable

Irvine Company's Donald Bren; empty lot at the intersection of Pacifica and Gateway in Irvine where the Irvine Company announced that it will build apartments. (Irvine Company, Google Maps, Getty)
Irvine Company's Donald Bren; empty lot at the intersection of Pacifica and Gateway in Irvine where the Irvine Company announced that it will build apartments. (Irvine Company, Google Maps, Getty)

The City of Irvine and the Irvine Company are working on a deal to add more than 4,500 apartments, a quarter of them affordable, to infill lots across town.

The Newport Beach-based developer hammered out the agreement to be decided Tuesday by the OC city, the Orange County Register reported.

The proposed agreement would benefit Irvine by helping the city meet its state-approved homebuilding goal of 23,600 homes by 2029, of which 15,000 would be deemed “affordable” for households earning less than local median income.

In turn, the Irvine Company could build homes on “in-fill” sites, or small parcels of Irvine Company land that’s either underused or vacant. The firm will pay $65 million in fees for the construction, which would help the city meet its 2029 home-production goals.

The deal was negotiated by a city committee that includes Mayor Farrah Khan and Vice Mayor Tammy Kim.

The 4,536 new apartments would be built at the company’s Discovery Park, Market Place, Spectrum, Los Olivos, and Technology Drive developments. Of those, nearly 1,000 would be deemed affordable

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At  Discovery Park, where 29 vacant acres were once planned for commercial use near Discovery and Laguna Canyon, OC’s largest developer would build 1,459 apartments, 150 of them affordable.

At the Market Place shopping center on Jamboree Road, the Irvine Company would replace 15 acres of what’s now 200,000 square feet of vacant stores with 1,261 apartments, 211 of them affordable. 

At Spectrum, a neighborhood filled with offices near Gateway and Pacifica, the Irvine Company would fill two sites spanning 10 vacant acres with 896 units, 150 of them affordable.

At Los Olivos, next to an Irvine Company apartment complex near Gitano and Encanto once considered for a new school, the company would fill 10 vacant acres with 600 apartments, 150 of them deemed affordable.

On Technology Drive, the developer would turn a 4-acre commercial lot near the 133 Freeway toll road into a 320-unit affordable housing complex. The firm seeks to donate the land to the city, which would then find a partner for construction — typically a developer specializing in affordable housing. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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