Million Square Feet of Offices Planned for Aliso Viejo Site

ALISO VIEJO — Parker Properties plans to begin construction this spring on the first phase of a million-square-foot office campus that could significantly change the look of Aliso Viejo.

Parker, headed by the father-and-son team of John and Russell Parker, has purchased the first seven acres from Mission Viejo Co. for an office project called Summit, which will overlook the newly opened San Joaquin Hills tollway.

The company plans to begin building two three-story buildings there in May totaling 170,000 square feet, plus a parking garage. That first phase, which carries a price tag of $22 million, could be complete by June 1998.

Developer John Parker, 69, said the multilevel, garden-style campus, which will eventually cover 64 acres, is geared to the growing base of professionals who live in South County and want to work there too.

“We want to be close to the homes and schools and close to the soccer fields,” he said. Summit’s primary target is high-growth companies, including technology firms that favor a low-key, campus-type setting to a high-rise. Summit, which is expected to take Parker up to five years to build out, will include 14 three- to five-story office buildings and seven retail facilities, including a high-end sports club, a hotel and day-care facility, connected by landscaped pedestrian walkways.

Parker has a contract to purchase the rest of the land, which it will finance with an institutional partner. The development of the first phase was backed by a local private investor.

Russ Parker said his firm is negotiating with two companies for space in the project’s first phase. One of these tenants was referred by the Mission Viejo Co., which had tried to build a facility for them, said Steve Delson, executive vice president of Mission Viejo Co. However, if a tenant is not lined up by May, Parker’s company will press forward with building plans.

The project will be located south of the toll road between Aliso Creek Road and Pacific Park Drive.

When complete, the 1.3-million-square-foot campus will be twice the size of the existing office buildings in Aliso Viejo’s Pacific Park, which began construction in the mid-1980s. It is expected to accommodate 7,000 workers, as many as in the rest of Aliso Viejo’s commercial and industrial center. Rents at Summit will run about $1.90 per square foot for the first phase, significantly higher than at other buildings in the area.

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Summit is just one of several new office projects planned for Orange County in the next year. The Irvine Co. and Trammell Crow Co. also have unveiled plans for office buildings, closer to John Wayne Airport.

Industry observers say there is now a pent-up demand for office space in South County because of its explosive housing growth, especially in the higher-end communities of Coto de Caza, Dove Canyon and Laguna Niguel, where many executives live.

And South County communities like Aliso Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita offer some of the more affordable new housing on the market. Many companies that have tried to migrate farther south have been stymied because of the limited supply of offices in the area, where most buildings are smaller.

“If you need 10,000 square feet or more in South County then that’s going to be a problem,” said Barry Saywitz, president of the Saywitz Co., a Santa Ana-based real estate firm.

“The first guy to come online with a [speculative] office building from the [Irvine] Spectrum south will have an opportunity to get their building leased up pretty quickly,” he said.

Occupancy in South County’s 62 office buildings now stands at 92%. The four office buildings in Aliso Viejo are currently 96% occupied, according to CB Commercial Real Estate Group, which is leasing the Summit project for Parker.

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Summit will have a different look and features than most of the office buildings built in Aliso Viejo during the construction boom of the ‘80s.

Tenant needs have changed since that time and different space configurations and amenities are now needed to accommodate them, according to a study Parker commissioned from architect and planner Gensler. Parker incorporated these changes into the buildings’ design. Inside the buildings, there will be larger floors with more space for informal meetings and housing of part-time employees, and fiber optic cabling to accommodate tenants’ data lines.

The environment also will be a little less sterile than traditional office space, with more natural light and windows that actually open, as well as suites with outdoor patios for meetings and corporate entertaining.

Innovative building features and retail and recreational amenities like day care, banking, health clubs and coffee shops are increasingly being used by high-growth firms as a magnet to draw the “best and brightest” work force, the study said.

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Summit is an ambitious project for John Parker, a 45-year industry veteran who has been out of the development business for several years.

Indeed, Summit is only the second building project he has done since his firm Equidon Companies went bankrupt in 1985. (He built a small office project, Pacific Terrace, in Aliso Viejo in 1987.)

Parker, a former division president of CB Commercial, began selling commercial and residential land in what would later become Newport Center and Irvine in the 1960s.

During the 1970s he formed his own development company, Parker Properties. When he decided to fold a construction company in, it became Equidon, which stood for equity development construction.

In the 198Os his contracting company worked for groups like C.J. Segerstrom & Sons and Hutton Center Associates, building office and industrial properties.

The company’s development arm, Equidon Investment Builders, also built projects with financial partners throughout Southern California, including the Antique Guild Center in Santa Ana, Von Karman Business Park and the Wilshire Brentwood Plaza in Los Angeles.

Parker also participated in several retail joint ventures with Mission Viejo Co.

Summit is a critical link in Mission Viejo Co.’s 300-acre Town Center, which got off the ground in earnest last year with groundbreaking on a 260,000-square-foot retail center including Edwards Theatres, a Hughes Market, Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Staples, as well as three casual-dining restaurants, all of which will be open by next fall.

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In the Works

Two buildings total 170,000 square feet