Industry Pushes Construction Market Ahead

Upgraded hospital services in Tarzana, single-family homes in Santa Clarita, North Hollywood’s emergence, Little Tikes and a lemon grower in Santa Paula — count them all among the drivers of major construction projects in progress across greater North Los Angeles County. Residential, office and industrial Topping the Business Journal’s list of Construction Projects, ranked by building costs, is the Providence Tarzana Medical Center Reimagined Project with a price tag of $542 million. See list on page 19. As reported in the Business Journal’s Sept. 16 issue, the medical campus’s re-development is well underway, to include a new patient care wing and emergency department. Owner Providence Health & Services and architect Perkins + Will are the forces moving the needle with this undertaking. In March, Providence St. Joseph Health System Southern California announced a joint venture with Cedars-Sinai to own and operate Tarzana Medical Center. Providence will retain controlling interest in the hospital with 51 percent ownership, while Cedars will own 49 percent. As part of the joint venture, the hospital aims to expand specialty services, including complex cardiac surgeries and gynecological oncology. Clinical offices at the Tarzana Medical Atrium, 5411 Etiwanda Ave., and Ventana Medical Plaza, 18133 Ventura Blvd., will help Cedars specialists plant flags in the Valley market. A 600-space parking structure has already been built and will open in October, while the patient tower breaks ground in November, Providence Tarzana Medical Center Chief Executive Dale Surowitz recently told the Business Journal. The extended lobby has a completion date of January 2022, and the tower will have occupancy by January 2023. Vista Canyon in Santa Clarita, No. 2 on the Business Journal’s list, and The Vineyards in Porter Ranch are like-minded projects bringing live/work/play to their respective markets. With Vista Canyon, JSB Development, headed by James Backer, and L.A.-based designers Johnson Fain and Gensler, are promising many units of residential and office, plus shopping. The initial residential development Jefferson Vista Canyon, which will bring 480 luxury apartments online, is currently underway, with first tenants expected to move in by mid-2020. Following that will come office and Gensler-designed retail – some 57,000 square feet of it – with a 2023 completion date. In Porter Ranch, Shapell Properties and Liberty Building Co.’s $150 million project called The Vineyards is a 335,000-square-foot complex to include retail, hotel, a Kaiser Permanente building and 266-unit upscale apartment complex that ranks No. 8 on the Business Journal’s list. In April, the property already began rolling out its retail anchors, beginning with Amazon.com Inc.-owned Whole Foods Market. Development of the housing component came about after Dallas builders JPI closed construction financing of $190 million in January and now those residential units are under construction, due by the end of 2020. Scaling up residential While the developments near Valencia and in Porter Ranch tout mixed-use elements, some developers are targeting straight housing. Case in point, the massive Santa Paula project currently in play by citrus company Limoneira Co. and Inland Empire-based Lewis Community Builders. The two entities are partnering on Harvest at Limoneira, No. 6 on the list, a 500-acre housing project just off the 126 freeway. The master-planned community has been seen by local municipal officers and economists alike as much-needed tonic to housing-challenged, economically depressed Ventura County. The joint venture broke ground on the 1,500-unit residential project, called East Area One, in 2017. The first tenants at Harvest at Limoneira should move in by year’s end. Capitalizing on the NoHo renaissance with the No. 5 project on the list, developers Merlone Geier Partners of Lake Forest, and Los Angeles-based GPI Cos. are racing to meet their fall 2019 due date with NoHo West, an ambitious, mass transit-adjacent, mixed-use complex going up on a property that for many years hosted a Macy’s department store. When complete, the 25-acre live/work/play-minded NoHo West will encompass 642 apartments, 300,000 square feet of retail with up to 60 dining and shopping tenants, a Trader Joe’s supermarket, movie theater and gym. Among some 20 retail tenants already confirmed at NoHo West: Regal Cinemas, 24 Hour Fitness, Urbane Café, The Stand, California Fish Grill and Ulta Beauty. NoHo West arrives just as WeWork debuts 40,000 square feet of co-working space at Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards beginning this fall while North Hollywood’s Arts District booms with quirky eateries and stores. Joining the fray is this retail, office and housing project which promises to become a community centerpiece. L.A.-headquartered Stir Architecture and Orange County’s Architects Orange intend to inject modernity into the transit-hugging, culturally transforming, millennial-friendly project, with signage facing the 170 freeway that wraps around the complex’s outer parameter. “The project was actually split between Architects Orange and Stir,” Architects Orange principal R.C. Alley recently told the Business Journal. “They did the retail part, we did the residential part.” Trammel Crow begins construction on the apartments this month. Mystery cost projects Beyond the Business Journal’s list, there are a handful of high-profile projects that did not qualify because cost figures were not disclosed or otherwise available. In what the Santa Clarita Economic Development Corp. considers a game-changing project to fill the housing arena, Fivepoint’s Valencia, formerly called Newhall Ranch, has 21,500 homes currently under construction to meet the workforce needs of booming Santa Clarita Valley in the next few years. And some of that workforce will no doubt wind up working at The Center at Needham Ranch, a business campus that is quickly leasing up. The joint venture of Trammel Crow and Clarion Partners in May announced that construction had begun on Phase 1B, a 54-acre business park atop 132 acres with three warehouses totaling 417,984 square feet, with a completion date by the end of the year. That same month, Chatsworth, phase I of MGA Entertainment’s 24 campus —255,000 square feet of creative office space —opened its doors after the toy company relocated its 400-employee workforce from Van Nuys to its new address at 9220 Winnetka Ave. Headed by Isaac Larian, MGA threw a grand opening party in mid-August which attracted L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Congressman Brad Sherman and District 12 City Councilman John Lee to commend the creation of the 24-acre mixed-use campus as a magnet project for the San Fernando Valley. Uncommon Developers, led by Jason Larian, Isaac’s son, is overseeing the project. Its next two phases — 660 residential units, ground-floor retail and outdoor public space with movie screen — will head toward 2021 and 2022 completion dates. L.A.’s Linespace studio worked on signage, sculpture and interior designs.