Apartments, eateries, shops drive Fullerton

Fullerton has what just about every other Orange County city seems to want-a downtown.

The city has worked for two decades to preserve and bolster its historic center on and around Harbor Boulevard, The area is home to an eclectic mix of trendy restaurants, bars and funky clothing stores.

Now Fullerton is seeing what city officials call downtown's largest influx of private investment yet. A couple of big apartment developers and a slew of restaurant owners are betting heavily on the area, figuring it is ripe to become a smaller version of Pasadena.

The new apartments alone represent $70 million in investment, according to the city.

Two projects, by Houston-based The Morgan Group Inc. and San Francisco-based BRE Properties Inc., are set to add nearly 400 luxury apartments to downtown. The city estimates an average of two or more people per new apartment. The complexes, set to be done by year's end and early next year, could put as many as 900 new residents in walking distance of nearby restaurants and shops.

Several restaurants already have opened, bringing the area's total to 42, according to the city. Among them: Table Ten, a contemporary American-style eatery that moved from Placentia in June; Zinng's, an upscale Asian eatery; and Revolucion, a Mexican cantina started by some Buena Park restaurateurs.

"The city of Fullerton is doing a lot of redevelopment, and in a couple of years it's going to be like a downtown Pasadena," said Treva Caron, co-owner of Table Ten.

The newcomers join several Fullerton mainstays, including the Cellar, considered one of Orange County's best restaurants, and the flashy Angelo's & Vinci's Italian restaurant.

But Fullerton faces a challenge that could prove telling for cities such as Anaheim, Irvine and Santa Ana, which are looking to build or bolster their downtowns. Can the midsize city of 130,000 support all these new restaurants and shops?

As the apartments are being built, many businesses along Harbor have had to contend with stretches of slow business. The start of fall classes at California State University, Fullerton and Fullerton College has helped, but many clearly are awaiting the arrival of downtown apartment dwellers.

Richard Gollis, who heads real estate consultancy The Concord Group in Newport Beach, said downtown restaurants may need to join forces and market themselves as a single location, not unlike what South Coast Plaza does.

"That really takes vision among the property owners and some leadership," Gollis said.

Fullerton does have an association of downtown restaurants and a business group. The city also has started touting downtown, mailing 14,000 fliers designed as guides to the area's restaurants.

Gilbert Wormac, owner of Plush Design Lab + Cafe, said business was slow when he opened his Internet cafe on Harbor this summer. But things have picked up since school started, he said.

Wormac said he decided to open his cafe-which also is home to his graphic design business and a mini-conference center-to target college students. He called the rent "very reasonable."

Wormac said he has approached neighboring restaurants about a joint marketing campaign. But so far they aren't interested, he said.

Downtown's revival got a boost from The Wilshire Promenade, an apartment complex now owned by Essex Property Trust of Palo Alto, and stores developed in the 1980s by Howard Platz Group of Glendale, according to Kay Miller, Fullerton's economic development manager

But store space on the ground floor of The Promenade has struggled, Miller said. Still, the apartments attract college professors and other professionals who like being downtown, Miller said.

"The residential is what really wowed us," Miller said of the Promenade apartments.

Fullerton has taken a homegrown tack with its downtown, unlike neighbor Brea. With its base of big retailers, Birch Street Promenade, Brea's downtown, is like a smaller version of CityWalk Hollywood in Studio City. Fullerton, which lost an art gallery to Birch Street, often takes shots at Brea by billing itself as a "real downtown."

Still, while downtown Fullerton is lively, it's not as bustling as Birch Street on a Friday night.

The city is convinced that bringing more apartments downtown can work wonders for the area. A selling point is Fullerton's location midway between downtown Los Angeles and Irvine.

The city gave a parking lot on Chapman Avenue near Harbor to The Morgan Group to develop its 183 apartments, dubbed City Pointe. As part of the deal, Morgan has to offer public parking at its project, according to Joel Rosen, chief planner with the city.

Morgan is set to build underground parking for residents and ground floor public parking. The public lot is open during construction to help nearby businesses-many of them new-including a Starbucks and Wahoo's Fish Taco.

Morgan is trying to put together a deal to buy the historic Fox Theatre on Harbor and an adjacent city parking lot, according to Rosen. Morgan wants to do more apartments and would relocate or raze the movie theater, which has sat empty for years.

The city also wants to redevelop a couple of parking lots it owns on Amerige Avenue just west of Harbor, according to Rosen. Details are being worked out, he said.

A few blocks from Harbor on Commonwealth Avenue, 192 apartments are being built under BRE's Pinnacle brand. The apartments are set to be four stories high on top of 8,800 square feet of shops and two levels of parking.

BRE took over a 2.5-acre site that used to host several older buildings, including offices, a substance abuse center and a house that had been turned into apartments.

"(We) looked at new retail and office uses and renovating the existing buildings," said Ken Barry, a CB Richard Ellis Inc. broker in Anaheim who worked to help zone the site for apartments and shops. "The conclusion was the only thing that made any sense was to see if there would be any developer interested in a high-density, mixed-use development that the city would support."

At the time the city signed off on the project, it was to be the first major new apartment project in North County in more than 10 years, said Barry, who brokered the sale of the site to BRE.

Bradley Griggs, an executive vice president with BRE, said his company is targeting young, single and married professionals ages 25 to 40. He also expects to lure some older couples whose children are grown and have moved out.

Rents at Pinnacle are set to be $1,200 to $1,800, Griggs said. The company should start leasing apartments in November, with the first tenants moving in a month or two later.

The Morgan Group's apartment project is behind BRE and should open by the middle of next year, according to the city.