First Air Base Project Kicks Off

TUSTIN, CA-Vestar Development Co. got under way Friday with the one-million-sf District at Tustin Legacy retail site at the former Marine Corps Air Station here. The development entity for the project is Vestar/Kimco Tustin LLC, a joint venture of Vestar and its financial partner, Kimco, a publicly traded REIT and one of the largest owners and operators of neighborhood and community shopping centers in North America.The Vestar/Kimco development is the first to take shape at the former Marine facility. It will include life-style retailers, theaters, upscale dining, cafes, specialty retailers, a specialty grocer and promotional stores. The development site is at the corner of Jamboree Road and Barranca Parkway in Tustin and is part of the overall Tustin Legacy project being developed on the former Marine Corps Air Station.More than two million Orange County residents and employees live or work within 10 miles of the project location, according to Jeffrey M. Axtell, project director for Vestar. The figure includes about 1.5 million who live within 10 miles of the project and about 900,000 that work within that radius. The overall Tustin Legacy project will include 4,600 new housing units and more than six million sf of commercial space on land adjacent to the Vestar development. City officials chose Vestar to develop the District at Tustin project on the basis of Vestar's Desert Ridge Marketplace in Phoenix. Vestar's other Southern California projects include Long Beach Towne Center, a one-million-sf center in Long Beach; Pico Rivera Towne Center, a 629,000-sf regional power center that is contained in a 200-acre master planned development in Pico Rivera; Spectrum Towne Center in Chino, an 830,000-sf power center; and the 600,000-sf Cerritos Towne Center, adjacent to the Center for the Performing Arts in Cerritos.