Triangle Square, the three-story urban retail center with interior parking opened 20 years ago on a triangular site between Harbor and Newport Boulevards at 19th Street in Costa Mesa, has been through a number of ownerships – each with a new idea for the faltering center’s rebirth.
Now current owner Greenlaw Partners, Newport Beach, is investing $25 million for another makeover. This one will aim the center away from retailing and toward dining and entertainment. Greenlaw is introducing three new restaurants, a bowling alley, a huge 24-Hour Fitness facility, and is working on new lighting, walkways, landscaping, and exterior design.
Included in changes to the 200,000-square-foot complex are improvements to the center’s complicated multi-level parking, which appears to have been a deterrent to customers ever since the center opened in 1992. Along with the new emphasis, the owners have come up with a new name: The Triangle.
Interestingly, the 241,000-square-foot Kaleidoscope at the San Diego Freeway (405) and Crown Valley Parkway in Mission Viejo, developed by the same Beverly Hills company as Triangle Square and which has also been through multiple owners and changes is, like The Triangle, aiming away from retail and toward dining and entertainment. In the same vein, the new owner of GardenWalk on Katella Avenue near Disneyland in Anaheim has also taken this direction for the once-bankrupt center.
Yet, the Irvine Spectrum Center – at which owner The Irvine Company once said retail could never mix well with a dining and entertainment center – is now thriving with major retail.
Go figure.
