After securing entitlements to convert a vacant 111,483-square-foot office building at 2020 E. First Street in Santa Ana, California for residential use, Harbor Associates, LLC (“Harbor”) has sold the building to publicly traded homebuilder Meritage Homes for $19.2 million.
After seeing office demand wane in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Harbor started working with the City of Santa Ana to re-entitle the site for the conversion of the 1980’s vintage office building for residential use.
“The COVID pandemic changed the way users live and work. Our recent adaptive reuse business plans are reflective of markets that have an excess supply of office inventory, but are dramatically undersupplied for housing, industrial and life science uses,” said Harbor Principal Paul Miszkowicz. “We anticipate more change in the built environment over the next 10 years than in the previous 30 years combined and are prepared to meet the needs of our local communities head on.”
In 2023 Harbor secured approvals from the City of Los Angeles for an office to residential conversion that will add 228 apartment units to the housing stock. More recently the firm secured approvals to demolish a 118,750-square-foot office building in the Santa Clarita area of unincorporated Los Angeles County and replace it with a 115,000-square-foot industrial building. The firm is currently finishing up the final touches of a 119,000-square-foot R&D-to-life science campus conversion in the City of Agoura Hills 35 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. The firm is also planning for an office-to-116 residential unit conversion in the City of Denver and a 6.75 acre industrial-to-IOS business plan in the Harbor Gateway area of unincorporated Los Angeles County.
Greg Sullivan and Anthony Delorenzo of CBRE advised Harbor in the sale to Meritage.
Harbor Associates, LLC is a value-add operating platform focused on acquiring and repositioning under-performing commercial real estate assets throughout Southern California and Denver. Harbor has been involved in the renovation, repositioning and development of 40 office projects totaling over 4.5 million square feet with a portfolio value in excess of $1.0B. The company is a joint venture with The Bascom Group, LLC.
