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‘MOTHER OF ALL DUMP SITES’ TO BECOME SHOPPING CENTER

By Curt Hazlett

Stretching along the crowded 405 Freeway in Carson, Calif., the 157-acre Cal Compact landfill has sat unused since the last trash truck pulled out in 1965. But that’s about to change in a big way. The city of Carson has given the green light to a partnership of two developers — Hopkins Real Estate Group of Irvine, Calif., and LNR Property Corp. of Miami Beach — to start turning the landfill into what will be the largest shopping center development in Los Angeles County.

Carson Marketplace, as the project is called, will fill that site and an adjoining 11-acre parcel with 1.3 million square feet of retail space, 1,200 housing units and a 200-room hotel. The land sale is scheduled to close Sept. 28, but the developers will need to spend about three years and $115 million for site remediation and improvements before construction can begin.

“This is a big deal in many ways,” said Richard Walter, president of Faris Lee Investments, an Irvine, Calif.-based retail advisory and brokerage firm with extensive knowledge of the area’s retail market. “It’s a huge site that will have retail, housing, a hotel and who knows what else at the end of the day. It will certainly be seen as a premier site for retailers, and, from a development perspective, it will do well.”

Stephen C. Hopkins, president of Hopkins Real Estate, called the Cal Compact site “a substantial landfill, probably the mother of all dump sites, and a lot of people have said that a property like this can’t be developed. That’s not going to be the case.”

Improvements in technology are allowing the reclamation of sites that once were considered too difficult to tackle, he says. “There are properties like this all over California, and you’re going to see more sites where people are going to find a way to remediate them and make them work.”

The landfill has drawn plenty of interest over the years. “The property has been in and out of escrow five or six times in the last 12 or 13 years,” said Hopkins. (Most recently, it was considered a leading site for a National Football League stadium.) “People didn’t spend the time, effort and capital to understand how it should be developed and to work with the city and the environmental agencies to get it done, and that’s what it takes.”

One key to success this time, he says, was persuading the Carson Redevelopment Agency to commit $110 million in city funds. Another was convincing the city that the brownfield site would be an ideal place for a mixed-use project. “When we got involved in 2003 and 2004, we said the highest and best use of this property was mixed-use retail and residential, and the council and staff were completely behind that, as was the community,” Hopkins said.

Faris Lee’s Walter called the combination of LNR Property and Hopkins Real Estate “a great partnership” for the site, noting that Hopkins brings extensive retail experience while LNR boasts a track record in developing sites with environmental problems, including former military bases.

“This is going to do a lot for this area,” said Walter. “I think the city finally sees that something needs to be done there, and it needs to make sense rather than chasing a dream.”