A portion of an eight-floor office building near John Wayne Airport could be converted into 75 apartment and townhome units.
The Irvine Planning Commission, on June 5, recommended a proposal to convert the first four floors of an eight-story office building at 1901 Main St. in the Irvine Business Complex (IBC) into a residential project with 66 apartment units. The top four floors would continue to be used as office space for the near future.
A separate building with nine townhomes could be built adjacent to the office tower. The townhomes, if approved, would be built on a surface parking lot.
The project’s applicant and owner – J&R 1901 Main LLC – is also considering an office-to-residential conversion for floors five through eight, but no plans were on the table as of the Planning Commission’s June 5 meeting.
The unit mix would be 42 studios, 12 one-bedrooms, 12 two-bedrooms and nine four-bedroom townhomes. Units would range in size from 479 square feet for a studio to 1,399 square feet for a two-bedroom apartment. Each townhome would measure 2,403 square feet.
The proposal also calls for a private dog park.
An Irvine city staff report added residential tenants would share parking space with office users. Both office and residential tenants would use a parking structure at 1905 Main St.
Each townhome would have its own attached parking garage, according to Irvine city staff.
The IBC building opened in 2002 with 172,676 square feet on nearly five acres, according to CoStar.
Morgan Stanley occupies the seventh floor, also according to CoStar data. BSH Home Appliances Corp., a home appliance manufacturer owned by the Bosch Group, is the building’s other tenant.
The building’s third and fourth floors are fully vacant, according to Irvine city staff.
Irvine’s city council members would have to weigh in on the proposal and vote on the conversion project before J&R 1901 Main LLC can finalize plans and begin construction.
J+R Group’s proposal is the latest play the company is making to shed office space it owns. The Irvine company that specializes in financing, developing and revitalizing commercial, mixed-use and residential properties sold a five-floor, 143,000-square-foot office tower at 2525 Main St., Irvine, for $37.6 million earlier this year.
Irvine’s Housing Plan
The proposed office-to-residential conversion project at 1901 Main St. is part of a larger city plan to add more housing units.
Irvine’s city council approved a plan in 2010, according to a staff report to planning commission members, to “facilitate the continued evolution of the IBC from solely office, industrial and commercial uses into a business and residential fully mixed-use community.”
City council members approved a general plan update in 2024, allowing for an additional 15,000 housing units to be built in the IBC area by 2045.
A few residential developments already exist in the IBC area, such as the 137-unit MDL condominium project, the 44-unit CitySquare condominium development, the 39-unit Lux condominiums and the 178-unit Aurum Apartments.
Office-to-Residential Conversions
Dallas-based real estate advisory firm CBRE, in a national report published in June, found Orange County ranked seventh in the country for office space to be converted or demolished into residential development.
The ranking is part of a larger national trend showing that more office space will be removed from U.S. markets this year than added to it for the first time since at least 2018.
Orange County has 26 projects and 4.2 million square feet of office space that is either planned or already underway for conversion or demolition.
There are 19 multifamily conversions in Orange County that are in the planning stages, including the 111,483-square-foot office building at 2020 E. First St. in Santa Ana. Meritage Homes bought the building and plans to convert it into 86 townhome-style units.
CBRE looked at 58 markets nationwide and found 23.3 million square feet of office space is slated for conversion or demolition by the end of this year.
Manhattan ranked first on the CBRE list, with 10.3 million square feet, or 2.5% of its overall inventory, earmarked for conversion this year.