The future of a former driving range in Signal Hill is slowly coming into view after a public meeting Thursday with prospective developers who want to turn the land into industrial property.
Only a faded sign remains of what was once Majestic Golf Land located at the corner of Willow Street and Orange Avenue as work crews and tractors level the land and work to abandon oil wells that sit on the property owned by Signal Hill Petroleum.
But soon it could become home to what’s “most likely going to be a Fortune 500 company” according to William Lu, a senior vice president of CenterPoint, the developer that’s seeking to build on the land and draw in a tenant.
The current proposal is for a 112,000 square-foot warehouse to be built on the property, with truck access to at the southwest of the parcel at lower Gundry Avenue and other employee access being created along 25th Street, which sits to the south of the proposed site.
If it moves forward, the project could also create a wider Orange Avenue by creating a full right turn lane onto Willow, something Lu said could alleviate some of the existing traffic at that intersection.
As of now, Lu said there is no tenant currently under contract, but said a truck terminal was not in the works.
“One thing I want to be very definitive about is what this project is not, this project is not a truck terminal,” Lu said.
A truck terminal would have more than double the amount of dock doors than the proposed warehouse could have. He said the warehouse they have in mind could accommodate a distribution center, light manufacturing and assembly or a corporate headquarters.
He answered a number of questions submitted from residents concerned about the project’s impact on surrounding property values, noise expected to be generated by the site and when construction could begin.
Lu said that the building would be “one of the best looking industrial buildings” in the state and attributed any negative impacts industrial buildings have on neighboring property values to their age and appearance. The majority of the noise would occur inside the building where the sounds of forklifts would likely be muffled by the concrete walls that would be over a foot thick.
Why the site wasn’t going to be used for a housing development is due to the site not being zoned for residential uses, said Kevin Laney, vice president of rig operations for Signal Hill Petroleum.
The timing of the project going forward will still leave plenty of opportunities for public input.
A formal project application is expected to be presented to the Signal Hill City Council in January, which could set off a chain of public meetings at the city’s Planning Commission and City Council before construction would start. If the timeline shared Thursday goes to plan, construction could start on the site as soon as September 2021.
Substantial completion of the project could be seen a year later, Lu said.