Birtcher Plans $70M Furnishings Center

Brandon Birtcher, president of Birtcher Development, says the company has identified a consumer demand for a one-stop home furnishing and interior design center with a large selection of quality tenants in an outdoor mall environment. Birtcher will raze an existing facility at the site, a 330,000-sf building that State Farm Insurance Cos. plans to close in June as part of a consolidation. Birtcher is buying the property from State Farm, which has been using the facility for underwriting, training and auto repair assessments.

The center will feature 800 feet of frontage along the 405 Freeway. It will include approximately 338,742 sf of showroom space in 12 to 14 concrete tilt-up buildings ranging from 9,000 to 60,000 sf, with most buildings planned as either one or two stories with 12 to 16 feet of clearance. Besides the more than 40 suites, the project will include a food court, pedestrian walkways and centralized parking. Birtcher expects to begin development in September, with completion slated for the fall of 2005. Listing agents for the project are Jim Snyder, Ken Gould, Andy Walburger and Mike Abel of the Newport Beach office of Lee & Associates.

Birtcher has retained the Buchanan Capital Advisors division of Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners to secure financing for the project, which is being designed by Lee & Sakahara Architects of Irvine.

Birtcher cites the Orange County demographics as a driver of the development. The population within a five-mile radius of the center is approximately 660,000, with an average household income of more than $72,000 per year and a median age of 32. The population within a 10-mile radius is more than 1.6 million, with an average household income of more than $79,000 and a median age of 33.

Birtcher was established in 1939 as a family enterprise specializing in real estate development, and since then it has developed more than 200 commercial and industrial properties comprising more than 50 million sf.