Developer Adding Home Furnishings Complex to Costa Mesa 'Cluster'

Birtcher's eight-building, 300,000-sq.-ft. retail complex will be called South Coast Home Furnishings Centre when it opens in December. The site is near a number of home accessory related stores.

By David Silva

Irvine-based Birtcher Development and Investments is spending an estimated $90 million to develop a portion of Costa Mesa near South Coast Plaza into a mecca for home furniture shoppers.

The South Coast Home Furnishings Centre will have reveal score lines and multiple earth-tone colors. Canvas awnings and pendants will be used to punctuate color throughout the complex (rendering courtesy of Lee and Sakahara Architects).

Demolition began Nov. 7 on the former State Farm claims and underwriting headquarters on Hyland Road, near Sunflower Boulevard, to make room for Birtcher's South Coast Home Furnishings Centre. The eight-building, 300,000-sq.-ft. retail complex won't be completed until December, but about 57 percent of it has already been leased, said Birtcher President Brandon Birtcher.

"When the property became available from State Farm [Insurance], it was immediately obvious to us that the area off the three nearby freeway exits of the 405 were becoming a center for the home furnishing and accessory business," Birtcher said. "At Bristol and Bear Street at South Coast Plaza, you have a number of home accessory-related tenants. Up on Harbor Boulevard, you have IKEA. The third exit above us is Euclid, where there are several dozen related businesses as well.

"So South Coast Home Furnishings will sit right in the middle of this cluster."

Wickes Furniture has signed on as the center's anchor tenant. The national furniture retailer will move its Costa Mesa store on Harbor Boulevard to a 42,000-sq.-ft. building in the complex.

Other leased tenants include Creative Leather, LaZBoy, Banner Mattress & Furniture, Legends, Salmo's Furniture and Munro's Furniture, as well as restaurants Samurai Sam's, The Great Steak and Potato Co. and Taco Time.

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Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services Inc. is the leasing agent for the center. Birtcher selected Ontario-based Fullmer Construction as general contractor for the project. Fullmer estimator Matt MacRitchie said an overriding concern in building South Coast Home Furnishings is that customers feel impressed when they see it.

"It's high-end for furniture specialty stores," said MacRitchie, who estimated Fullmer would spend $17 million in construction costs to build the center. "You'll see a lot of nice finishes and architectural details. We spent a lot of time in the design-build portion to make it look like a really high-end destination."

Those architectural details are the purview of Irvine-based Lee & Sakahara Architects, which designed the project. The firm's plans call for concrete tilt-up structures with reveal score lines and multiple earth-tone colors.

Canvas awning and pendants are used to punctuate color throughout the complex. Power elements include a panelized roof system that emphasizes elevations at key points of the buildings.

A 30-ft.-wide promenade with an overhead steel structure runs between the complex's eight buildings to give shoppers access to the smaller tenants. The promenade leads to a 10,000-sq.-ft. plaza near the restaurants. The plaza has a large fountain as its focal point and contains patio seating for both dining and to accommodate special events.

Ronald Sakahara, president of Lee & Sakahara Architects, said the center was designed to encourage foot traffic and maximize window-shopping.

"From a planning standpoint, we designed the project to be internally oriented, with public entry points toward the center," Sakahara said. "This provides a strong emphasis on pedestrian circulation throughout the site. A walkway loop system [ties] all the buildings together.

"One of the concepts of the design was to provide large areas of glass for tenants to showcase their goods. We have significant freeway frontage, so large glass was a concept that we wanted to carry throughout the project here."

Birtcher said the decision to develop South Coast Home Furnishings Centre was helped along by an experience he had as a young man.

"When I was in college at Claremont Men's College, I would work during the summer in our company's various out-of-state offices," he said. "One of the offices I worked at was in the leasing office for Pacific Design Center in New York, where I learned a great deal about the home furnishing industry."

Birtcher Development was founded in 1939 by Justus Birtcher, Brandon Birtcher's great-grandfather.