The owner of a mid-rise office building near John Wayne Airport in Irvine has caught the adaptive reuse bug, reports the Orange County Business Journal.

J+R Group, LLC, owner of the eight-story building at 1901 Main Street, has reportedly filed plans to convert a portion of the 173,000-square-foot structure into housing. Plans call for converting multiple floors of the tower into 76 dwellings, while building a ground-up apartment complex on property next door.

According the OC Business Journal, J+R Group acquired the site in 2016 for $66 million, and currently offices out of the building. The company has renovated the property since its purchase, but is also known for securing entitlements for development elsewhere in Irvine.

1901 Main Street in IrvineGoogle Maps

Adaptive reuse is commonplace in the City of Los Angeles, where the conversion of historic buildings into housing has played a key role in the resurgence of Downtown, and is being leaned on to help the city comply with its legal obligation to rezone for more than 255,000 new homes in the coming years. However, conversion projects have yet to take off in Orange County, save for a recent effort to transform a 1960s office building in Santa Ana into apartments.

Currently, the office vacancy rate for Orange County hovers above 17 percent, with Class A buildings running an even higher rate of 22 percent.

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