THE TRUCK STOPS HERE
John Laing Homes and Pacific CityHome to build 56 homes in Anaheim

By Julie Nakashima
Staff Writer of CREJ

Anaheim, CA - A former Anaheim trucking facility will provide the Orange County city with a much-needed infusion of lower-cost housing.

John Laing Homes of Newport Beach and Pacific CityHome, a housing fund that was started by former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, broke ground on a redevelopment project in Anaheim called The Boulevard that will offer affordable and market-rate housing units.

The urban infill project marks John Laing Homes' first collaboration with Santa Monica-based Pacific CityHome, according to Steve Kabel, president of the south coast division of John Laing Homes.

"We're coming into this arm-in-arm with the intent of opening up more doors to homeownership in the workforce housing arena," Steve Kabel said.

Slated to open later this year, the project includes 36 attached, affordable town houses and 20 market-rate, detached single-family dwellings on 5.5 acres of a former truck-transfer property. Woodley Architectural Group of Costa Mesa is the project architect.

Kabel said that the attached and detached housing both complement the character of the adjacent Colony Historic District residential area. The stone and brick-faced town houses, all fronting on Anaheim Boulevard, evoke East Coast brownstones while the detached homes have been designed in the Craftsman, Normandy and Spanish styles to complement the existing homes along Lemon Street.

Kabel pegs the Boulevard's project cost at $19.5 million and total revenue at $21.5 million.

The Boulevard also represents the growing infill trend of recycling property that has outlived its usefulness in its current land use.

As a former trucking facility, the project site contained petroleum-based diesel contaminants that had to be extracted and removed. Kabel estimated the cost of the remediation, which his company performed as the city's agent prior to the close of escrow, at less than $50,000.

Kabel said that John Laing Homes made a strategic business decision several years ago to become more involved in infill housing development, and began conversations with a number of Orange County cities, particularly the north county's older, built-out municipalities.

"We approached the city of Anaheim ... and they shared with us their vision for redeveloping and revitalizing their downtown," Kabel said.

The city is hoping to accomplish several goals, he said. One, is to revitalize the downtown of the city into a vibrant place, where people will stay well into the evening hours for dining and shopping. The city also hopes the project will help solve its affordable housing crisis.

"They're trying to find ways to bring workforce housing back into their city, and put people into homes in proximity to where they work," Kabel said. "The city is giving priority to residents of Anaheim as well as to workers of companies based in Anaheim.

"They're targeting price points in the high $200,000s to the low $300,000s," he added, "which is well below the median for new condos in Orange County."

According to the California Association of Realtors, only 18 percent of Orange County households can afford to buy a median-priced home, which now costs in excess of $500,000.

John Laing Homes initially began working on the site in a public-private partnership with the Anaheim Redevelopment Agency. During the entitlement process, the company came across Cisneros' housing startup, which, Kabel said, shares his company's goal of introducing new neighborhoods in existing communities.

The two partners have lined up a second project in Anaheim, known as the Kwikset manufacturing site, on Santa Ana Boulevard. The development will consist of 138 for-sale units, 25 percent of which will be affordable. John Laing Homes and Pacific CityHome will develop half of the 20-acre site, while Lewis Operating Group of Upland is responsible for the other half.

In addition, John Laing Homes and Pacific CityHome have teamed for a project in Inglewood.

It will be the city's job to qualify prospective buyers of the Boulevard's affordable units for household income and downpayment assistance.