South Coast Home Furnishings Centre to House Quality Home Furnishing Showroom

Furniture World Magazine

Birtcher Development, LLC, based in Laguna Niguel, Calif., has announced plans to develop Southern California's largest and most comprehensive home design and furnishing center. The project, named the South Coast Home Furnishings Centre, will house approximately 40 quality home furnishing showrooms. The development will be centrally located in Costa Mesa, Calif., in the heart of Orange County, and will have frontage on the 405 Freeway, north of the Harbor Boulevard exit. The leasing team includes Jim Snyder, Ken Gould, Andy Walburger and Mike Abel of the Newport Beach office of Lee & Associates. Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners has been retained to secure the financing for the project, which upon build-out will be valued at nearly $70 million. "Birtcher identified a consumer demand for a one-stop home furnishing and interior design center that had a large selection of quality tenants all within an outdoor mall environment," said Brandon Birtcher, president of Birtcher Development. "We designed the center to provide optimum convenience and selection for the consumer." Birtcher added that the center will include a food court, attractively landscaped pedestrian walkways, and convenient, centralized parking. The development will include approximately 338,742 square feet of showroom space in 12 to 14 buildings ranging from 9,000 to 60,000 square feet. Most buildings will be one-story with 12 to 16 foot clearance. More than 40 suites are available. Development will begin September 2004, and completion is slated for Fall 2005. Lee & Sakahara Architects of Irvine, California has designed an aesthetically pleasing single-story concrete tilt-up project with a creative and comprehensive sign program. South Coast Home Furnishings Centre has 800 feet of 405 Freeway frontage at the north-bound Harbor Boulevard freeway on-ramp, which a third of a million cars drive past each day. Cross streets include Sunflower Avenue, South Coast Drive and Hyland Avenue. The project is also in close proximity to the 55 Freeway and 73 Corridor, South Coast Plaza, and IKEA, a major home furnishings retailer. According to Birtcher, the area has strong demographic benefits that support the demand for South Coast Home Furnishings Centre. Within a five-mile radius of the center, there are approximately 660,000 residents with an average household income of more than $72,000 per year and a median age of 32. Within a ten-mile radius there are more than 1.6 million residents with an average household income of more than $79,000 and a median age of 33. About Birtcher Development, LLC Since its inception in 1939 as a family enterprise specializing in real estate development, the entity has a legacy of developing more than 200 commercial and industrial properties comprising more than 50 million square feet. Headquartered in Laguna Niguel in Orange County, California, the Birtcher Development Group is part of a family of companies that also specialize in property management (Birtcher Anderson Properties) and acquisition and investment (Birtcher Investments, LLC), one of the leading real estate firms in the Western United States.