Lennar Will Begin Great Park Development with Commercial/Educational; Housing is Delayed

I’m going to make this the Orange County Great Park Week at Redfin. First up, Lennar and the Great Park.

The Orange County Great Park, which was once the El Toro Marine Air Base and is approximately twice the size of New York’s Central Park, is being developed by the City of Irvine as one of the first great metropolitan parks of the 21st century. The City’s vision is to provide a recreational, cultural and social gathering spot for Orange County residents as well as for others who are near to or far from Orange County. As Central Park, Balboa Park and Golden Gate Park are great metropolitan parks built in previous eras, the City’s vision for the Orange County Great Park is that it will be a great metropolitan park built in this era.

Homebuilder Lennar owns and is developing the land that, roughly speaking, surrounds the publicly-held city land. Lennar’s vision has been to create housing adjacent to the public development as well as build commercial, educational and recreational features. Lennar and Irvine have worked cooperatively, but each controls its own development. I’ll write about the status of the Irvine side of the Great Park development in another post. Today I’ll concentrate on the status of Lennar’s development in the Great Park area (which Lennar is calling the Great Park Neighborhoods).

Status of Lennar’s Great Park development (the Great Park Neighborhoods):

When the housing market was booming, Lennar had planned to start its Great Park development with the building of high-end single family residential. In the recent housing market heyday, that would have been a good business move. But times change, and so has Lennar’s plans. Fortunately for Lennar, since this project includes more than residential, the company has room to make adjustments that are more in line with current market conditions.

These adjustments mean that Lennar will begin their Great Park development with the building of office, retail and educational instead of residential. Lennar will start this building in one of its three planned Great Park Neighborhoods, the Life Long Learning District. Lennar’s long-term plans call for the Life Long Learning District to have homes as well as commercial and educational. However, this fall Lennar will start building the retail and educational portion of the district. The housing will wait for another time. In fact, Lennar’s current plans do not call for any homes to be available until 2010.

For information on Lennar’s tentative housing prices for its Great Park homes, see “The Orange County Great Park Update: Housing Availability.”

Tomorrow’s post: Lennar will participate in the Orange County Great Park third anniversary celebration, “The Festival of Flight,” July 12th.

GRAPHIC COURTESY LENNAR’S HERITAGE FIELDS (GREAT PARK NEIGHBORHOODS)