Segerstrom aims to redevelop Santa Ana shopping center into retail village

C.J. Segerstrom & Sons and Hines have moved forward with plans to build an urban-retail village in Santa Ana, north of Segerstrom’s South Coast Plaza mall.

An affiliate of the Costa Mesa-based firm owned by the Segerstrom family has filed plans to redevelop the 17.2-acre South Coast Plaza Village shopping center at 1621 Sunflower Avenue, the Orange County Business Journal reported.

Segerstrom, owner of the property, and the Houston-based developer Hines, would replace the 100,000-square-foot shopping center built in the 1970s with a 1.9 million-square-foot mixed-use development.

The project, dubbed The Village Santa Ana, would include 1,583 homes, up to 300,000 square feet of offices and up to 80,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.

A foggy sketch shows three residential or office towers with tree-lined balconies, three six-story apartment or condominium complexes, and a low-lying retail village dotted with trees.

The new Village Santa Ana would be pedestrian-friendly, furthering the city’s vision to “transform conventional auto-oriented shopping plazas into dynamic nodes of activity that blend healthy living, working, shopping and dining in a contemporary village environment,” according to the filing.

If approved, the project would take five phases and two decades to complete, depending on market conditions. 

The first three phases would include 1,050 homes and 73,200 square feet of shops and restaurants.

The fourth phase would include up to 300,000 square feet of offices and 6,800 square feet of retail.

A final phase would include the last 269 homes. When finished, Village Santa Ana would include 3.3 acres of open space, including an outdoor event area, bike paths and a fitness loop, and parking for 3,520 cars.

Neither Segerstrom nor Hines has said how many of the homes would be for sale, how many would be for rent, or if the project would include affordable housing.

It’s unclear whether current tenants in South Coast Plaza Village, which include restaurants, art galleries and retail stores, would be offered storefronts in the new Village Santa Ana.

The proposed project is across the street from South Coast Plaza, the nation’s largest luxury mall, also owned by the 125-year-old Segerstrom. The Costa Mesa mall made $2.4 billion in taxable sales last year, according to the Business Journal.

The proposed urban village is also next door to a major shopping center redevelopment planned by the Callens family and Irvine-based Related California, a unit of New York-based Related Companies.

The 42-acre project, dubbed Related ­Bristol, would replace the 460,000-square-foot Metro Town Square at 3694 South Plaza Drive in Santa Ana. Plans call for 3,750 apartments, 200 senior housing units, 350,000 square feet of offices, shops and restaurants and a 250-room hotel.

The Village and Related Bristol are among the largest pending developments in OC. Together, they could result in the construction of more than 5,300 homes between Sunflower Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard.

— Dana Bartholomew

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