After more than two decades of delays, the long-planned One Broadway Plaza has re-emerged with a revised plan that shifts the 37-story high-rise away from office space and toward 602 upper-end, market-rate apartments.<\/p>\n
Developer Mike Harrah, president of Santa Ana-based Caribou Industries, told the Business Journal that the overhaul reflects a post-pandemic market reality that upended the original project\u2019s plan as an office tower. The latest proposal adds 187 more units, an eight-level parking structure and a grocery store, and reduces office space compared with earlier versions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe uses have changed because the economy has changed,\u201d said Harrah. \u201cMainly because of COVID, where everybody started working from home and commercial buildings took a big hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
If built, One Broadway Plaza at 1109 North Broadway in Santa Ana\u2014across the street from Orange County School of the Arts and less than a mile from Santa Ana\u2019s Civic Center\u2014would become the tallest building in Orange County.<\/p>\n
With several government office buildings and public transit nearby, the plan is to convert the Civic Center area from a daytime employment hub into a true live-work district, Harrah said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really isn\u2019t anything like this here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Highest and Best Use<\/p>\n
This is the third time Harrah is revising One Broadway Plaza.<\/p>\n
The city originally approved the skyscraper as an office tower back in 2004.<\/p>\n
In January 2020, Harrah reduced the office space and added 415 residential units, which the city approved later that year.<\/p>\n
Now, the most recent proposal calls for a 37-story tower with 602 market-rate residential units, along with some office and retail uses, a detached eight-level parking structure and a grocery store, according to city planning records.<\/p>\n
The building would total roughly 800,000 square feet, with about 70,000 square feet dedicated to retail.<\/p>\n
Residential units would be a minimum of 500 square feet, according to city records.
\u201cResidential is the highest and best use,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Instead of including affordable units onsite, Harrah plans to pay an in-lieu fee of about $4.7 million to the city. The money would go to the city\u2019s general fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt it was a better use of the money,\u201d Harrah said. \u201cThat money is used to build parks and things in the city, rather than putting 19 affordable units out of 600.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is expected to cost around $400 million. Harrah said financing has not yet been arranged.<\/p>\n
The Need for Housing<\/p>\n
Harrah said the city\u2014and Orange County\u2014is in dire need of housing.<\/p>\n
Apartment vacancy in Orange County has remained below 2%, he said, particularly in Santa Ana.<\/p>\n
According to apartment data company, RentCafe, the average rent for an apartment in the city is $2,732, up 1.76% year over year. Studios start at $1,900, while three-bedroom units can reach $3,650.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the city\u2019s office market still hasn\u2019t rebounded from the pandemic, with direct vacancy at 21.5% ending in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Kidder Mathews. In 2019, office vacancy in Santa Ana was at 10%.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the grace of God, I\u2019m glad we didn\u2019t build it as a commercial building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it would be empty with all the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrah described One Broadway Plaza as an upper-end, market-rate high-rise, offering rents comparable to newer developments but with more amenities.<\/p>\n
He said the proposed amenities include a ground-floor grocery store, restaurants, health spas and a swimming lagoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would cost the same in rent, but you\u2019re getting a lot more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The developer is banking on attracting thousands of county, city and court employees who work nearby to rent at One Broadway.<\/p>\n
Many of them currently commute from other cities, Harrah said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re driving home to Irvine or Huntington Beach or Riverside,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea is to give people the option to live where they work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrah also pointed to transit access, including the OC Streetcar, a 4-mile electric streetcar that connects Santa Ana to Garden Grove. The route, expected to open this spring, will run from Santa Ana\u2019s train station to a new transit stop at Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove, with several stops in downtown Santa Ana, including the Civic Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the future\u2014public transportation, lowering traffic congestion and reducing greenhouse gas impacts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One Broadway\u2019s Long History<\/p>\n
For Harrah, the project has been a long time coming.<\/p>\n
The city initially approved the controversial skyscraper in the early 2000s despite residents\u2019 protests.<\/p>\n
The mixed-use development has faced a series of lawsuits and setbacks from historical preservationists.<\/p>\n
Now, he\u2019ll go through the gauntlet again to seek approval to increase the number of residential units from 415 to 602.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely not in favor of this monstrosity of a building,\u201d Tracy Simons, the president of the Washington Square Neighborhood Association, told the Business Journal in an email.<\/p>\n
Harrah held his first Sunshine Ordinance Community Meeting last month, where roughly 25 people attended, out of several thousand notified, he said.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Harrah said financing discussions are ongoing as interest rates ease. Construction is tentatively targeted to begin in the first quarter of 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been here 33 years,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a big deal for me\u2014to help raise the bar downtown, bring in tax dollars and put a lot of people to work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than two decades of delays, the long-planned One Broadway Plaza has re-emerged with a revised plan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-190224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}