Great Park Neighborhoods – formerly called Heritage Fields – is the name for the communities that are planned to be built around the edge of the 1,347-acre Orange County Great Park.  The Great Park will be a centerpiece of these new communities.

On January 10, 2011, Five Point Communities, LLC, the development manager of Great Park Neighborhoods, announced that the master-planned community has reached a milestone with the submittal of detailed first-phase plans to the City of Irvine.

“This is what we all have been waiting for,” said Emile Haddad, CEO of Five Point Communities. “For the past three years we have been working on positioning the project to adapt to the change in market conditions, including product offerings, compatibility with the Orange County Great Park phasing and long-term capital commitments. Today, we are submitting thousands of pages of detailed maps for city review. We are ready to move forward.”

The project will provide tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure for the development of the Orange County Great Park, thousands of construction jobs and millions of dollars for the benefit of the Irvine Unified School District.

The master plan submittal, when approved, will allow for the construction of nearly 5,000 homes and 1.2 million square feet of space designed for retail, recreational, office, R & D and educational purposes.

Since the Navy sold the property in 2005, Great Park Neighborhoods and the City of Irvine have established a strong public-private partnership. Five Point Communities is responsible for developing Great Park Neighborhoods and the City of Irvine is responsible for building the 1,347-acre Orange County Great Park. “This partnership is essential to building out a master planned community of this scale,” Haddad said.

In accepting the submittal on behalf of the city, Mayor Sukhee Kang said “we are pleased to be moving forward as public-private partners. The City of Irvine and Five Point Communities each has its respective role through this process but both of us are committed to following the tradition of master planning that has made the City of Irvine so successful and desirable.”

The completion of public hearings and City approvals is expected in late summer 2011 with grading and infrastructure work starting shortly thereafter. The delivery of the first homes is anticipated in 2013, assuming the real estate market in Irvine continues its recovery.

“Very few projects of this complexity and magnitude are moving forward,” stated Haddad. “This shows the commitment made by our partners and the lender as well as the value they place on the Irvine market.”

The Great Park Neighborhoods is a venture consisting of national homebuilder Lennar Corp., investment firm Rockpoint Group LLC, MSD Capital LP, and LNR Property LLC, which will be working closely with Five Point on the commercial component of this project.

Larry Agran, Chairman of the Orange County Great Park Corporation Board, stated “this submittal is a big step forward for all of us. This has been an unprecedented real estate market and now we can look forward to implementing the plan we always envisioned of having a world class park next to a unique community that is walkable and transit friendly.” 

Located on the former El Toro Marine Corp Air Base, the boundaries of the Great Park Neighborhoods are generally Portola Parkway to the north, Route 133 to the west, Alton and Bake to the east and the I-5 to the south.

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