Vegas developers bet on renovating 286 former military homes in Concord

A pair of Las Vegas developers aim to fix up 286 vacant homes on a former U.S. Coast Guard property in Concord.

Eddie Haddad and business partner Georges Maalouf say they will apply this month to renovate the former military homes at Concord Villages at 3295 Haleakala Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.  

The move runs contrary to requests from the city, which wants the duo to submit a master plan for new high-density housing at the 58-acre site that would require a lengthy environmental review. 

Haddad and Maalouf, behind Q Villages LLC, say the city has “found a way” to open the existing units using a “streamlined environmental review process.”

Concord City Attorney Susanne Meyer Brown said her office hasn’t determined whether the renovations will be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act because it hasn’t seen the application.

The 286 long-vacant units slated for immediate renovation are at two different sites at Concord Villages, including 206 units at Victory Village and 80 at Quinault Village. It contains 40 duplexes built in 1965 and 42 apartment buildings built in 1989, not far from the North Concord BART station, according to Loopnet.  

The developers have said renovating the former military housing would cost between $1 million and $3 million.

Haddad and Maalouf paid $58.4 million for the property in a federal auction in 2021. They submitted a preliminary application, which is intended to provide feedback from the city, in May 2021. 

City Planner Joan Ryan said the city had expected a formal submittal from the developers last fall.

“They’ve indicated they’ve been doing market research, retained their planning team and most recently their landscape architect to prepare their plans and applications,” Ryan said. 

Haddad said it makes more sense to do the renovations now because they can provide immediate, much-needed housing.

“We’re not pledging any redevelopment because of the market conditions that are basically imposed upon us,” Haddad told the Business Times. 

The city wants the property, which is about a mile away from the North Concord BART station, to have thousands of new apartments.

Haddad did not comment on how many units the developers would build there, but said that a priority project would be a 100-percent affordable housing complex providing between 200 and 250 homes. Building new homes on the rest of the site would take a decade.

Meanwhile, It’s back to the drawing board for the Bay Area’s largest housing development. Late last month, Concord killed a $6 billion plan to build nearly 16,000 homes on the former Concord Naval Weapons Station because of a family dispute involving a major developer. 

The city has said it will issue a memo in March laying out the next steps for naval station  redevelopment, adding that “the goal is to keep the project moving forward.”

Haddad is a Las Vegas-based real estate broker and developer who buys and sells foreclosed homes. He was behind the HUE Lofts at Art Central project, a failed 38-story skyscraper in Las Vegas.

Maalouf and Haddad have a history of working together, according to the Business Times. The pair purchased the bankrupt Legacy Golf Course in Henderson, Nevada, with a plan to redevelop it.

In 2017, they were sued by residents who wanted to maintain the property as a golf course. The lawsuit was settled in 2018, with both sides agreeing that only a portion of the property would be developed. Proposals have included a shopping center, luxury apartments and a hotel.

— Dana Bartholomew