A vision for two aging shopping centers may introduce a new kind of living to the South Coast Metro area, one that would create a very different south Bristol Street corridor in one of Orange County’s most popular destinations for shopping and culture.
Related Bristol is a proposed mixed-use development in an area of the county that has seen little new housing construction in recent years and has largely stayed true to the traditional distinct separation of housing and commercial development.
Envisioned is a two-block development of up to 3,750 residential units, a 250-room hotel, a 200-unit tower for senior living and up to 350,000 square feet of restaurants and shops, a grocer, as well as 13 acres of open space for the public, all mixed together in a new neighborhood. If approved, developer Related California, based in Irvine, could break ground on the project as early as 2026, though the phased construction would likely take until 2036.
The South Coast Metro area, which spans Costa Mesa and Santa Ana, is already the county’s cultural center. The Segerstrom Center for the Arts, with its revolving selection of musical performances and Broadway and black box theater, the Orange County Museum of Art, which is closing in on its first anniversary in its new designer home, and, most notably, South Coast Plaza draw millions of visitors to the area each year.
Just across the street from the arts area and the plaza, the two blocks on the west side of Bristol Street between MacArthur Boulevard and Sunflower Avenue have seen little change in decades.
They have been owned by the Callens family for more than 100 years. In the 1970s, as South Coast Plaza took root, the Callens family followed suit across the street, turning their farming land into two shopping centers surrounded by a sea of asphalt parking lots. It’s home now to large retailers such as Ross Dress for Less and Hobby Lobby, a Vons, restaurants of varying size, smaller storefront businesses and a couple…
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