Orange County retail owners are paying to add housing and keep tenants

Burnham-Ward Properties just bought a suburban Orange County retail center and put a residential program on top of it, without walking away from the retail work. The company purchased Enderle Center in Tustin, California, and plans to redevelop and rebrand it as Campo on 17th, according to Shopping Center Business.

On the same news cycle, Colliers closed a clean neighborhood-center trade up the coast: the brokerage handled the $11.3 million sale of Kellogg Square in Santa Barbara, REBusinessOnline reported. The buyer was not disclosed, and AJR Capital Group was the seller, according to REBusinessOnline.

For retail operators, procurement leaders, and property management teams, these are two versions of the same 2026 reality: the value case for neighborhood retail is increasingly tied to whether the site can take a construction program, utilities refresh, and circulation changes while keeping tenants open and leasing momentum intact.

Campo on 17th is a redevelopment plan written like an ops scope

Shopping Center Business reported that Campo on 17th is planned to include about 60,000 square feet of revitalized commercial space plus 100 new for-sale townhome residences, with Intracorp handling the development. The location is East Seventeenth Street and Enderle Center Drive in Tustin.

Operationally, the key detail is the scope Burnham-Ward highlighted in its early description: it includes new construction plus renovations to existing buildings, along with utility upgrades, a parking rework, better on-site circulation, and broader improvements across the property, according to Shopping Center Business. That sounds less like a cosmetic refresh and more like a multi-trade capital job with long-lead equipment and sequencing risk.

Leasing is already underway, with retail units ranging from 988 square feet to 6,880 square feet, Shopping Center Business reported. That size band is a practical tell: it supports a tenant mix that can rotate in service retail and food, but it also means more demising walls, more metering decisions, and more coordination of grease, HVAC, and electrical upgrades across smaller bays.

A tenant note in the plan also signals how owners are trying to protect traffic while work is underway. Shopping Center Business reported that Zov’s, described as a community staple since 1987, will open in a larger, refreshed 8,200-square-foot location and serve as an anchor tenant within the redeveloped project.

An $11.3M Santa Barbara trade is a reminder that “plain retail” is still liquid

REBusinessOnline reported that Kellogg Square, at 5555-5585 Hollister Ave. in Santa Barbara, sold for $11.3 million in a Colliers-brokered transaction. Colliers’ team representing the buyer included Miles Waters, Austin Herlihy, Chris Parker and Mike Chung, according to REBusinessOnline.

The article did not disclose cap rate, occupancy, or a business plan. But the mere fact pattern, an undisclosed buyer buying a neighborhood center in a high-cost California market, suggests that plenty of operators are still willing to run “retail as retail” when the center’s physical plant and tenant roster are straightforward to operate.

That matters for facilities and procurement leaders because it keeps competition alive for contractors, service vendors, and tenant improvement capacity. When neighborhood retail continues to trade, new owners often reset maintenance standards and reporting cadences quickly, even if they do not reposition the asset.

The conference chatter behind these deals is about execution

Shopping Center Business is also using its platform to capture operator-level commentary at ICSC Las Vegas 2026 through its sponsored Retail Insight interview series, the publication noted on its homepage. The existence of that programming is another signal of where attention is going: the hard part is not describing “mixed-use,” it is operating through the transition.

Campo on 17th’s scope details show why. Utility upgrades and parking reconfiguration tend to pull in civil work, electrical service coordination, and tenant communication plans early. If the project is phased, it also forces decisions about temporary access, wayfinding, and how CAM and construction recovery will be handled during downtime.

For landlords with similar sites, the more useful benchmark in Shopping Center Business’ reporting is not the renderings. It is the combination of (1) a defined residential count, 100 for-sale townhomes, (2) a defined commercial program, about 60,000 square feet, and (3) explicit mention of utilities and circulation work. That combination is what vendors will price against and what tenants will ask about in LOI negotiations.

Where this lands in 2027 operating budgets and scopes

• For mixed-use or major refresh projects: confirm early whether upgraded utilities means new service size, new transformers, or just distribution. The answer drives schedule risk and the bid package strategy (single GC vs. split trades). Shopping Center Business’ Campo on 17th description puts “upgraded utilities” in the core scope.
• For leasing and tenant retention: map which tenants can tolerate access changes, and which ones need hard guarantees on parking counts and circulation. Campo on 17th explicitly includes reconfigured parking and improved circulation, according to Shopping Center Business.
• For acquisitions of “plain retail”: use the $11.3 million Kellogg Square sale as a current-cycle comp marker for how quickly coastal California neighborhood centers can still transact, then pressure-test your diligence timeline and vendor capacity assumptions accordingly, based on REBusinessOnline’s reporting.
• For food anchors and phased work: treat an expanded 8,200-square-foot restaurant buildout like a critical path item (grease, exhaust, fire-life safety). Shopping Center Business identified Zov’s expansion as an anchor element of Campo on 17th.