Civic Center Development Chugs Forward

Fountain Valley's 10-acre Civic Center-area development near the I-405 Freeway is rolling toward completion within several months.

The 127-room Ayers Hotel, bar and restaurant; and 88-home development on 10 acres at the corner of Brookhurst Street and Slater has been springing up over the last year since the Fountain Valley City Council granted the developers final approval in March of last year.

The Olson Company is the home developer for the new neighborhood, dubbed the Solana Walk. According to the company's website, the development includes three different models of homes and town homes, which run from $400,000-plus to $600,000-plus.

The development is already 50-percent sold out. Workers continue to frame up homes facing Brookhurst, but homes are finished along Slater.

Bill Holford, president of Olson Communities, said 38 of the 88 homes have been built, and 67 have been sold -- there's a backlog of 29 that haven't been built yet. 

Twenty haven't yet started construction, but Holford said he expects the whole neighborhood to be finished by the first quarter of 2014.

"It's been a very strong-selling community -- great demand," he said.

Bruce Ayres, president of the 19-hotel Ayres Group, said the hotel is slated for completion and a soft opening in October of this year, with a grand opening a month or two later. The hotel venture is unconnected to the Olson homes, Ayres Group just bought land from them, Ayres said.

The Costa Mesa-based firm has three hotels under construction, Ayres said: the other two are in Orange and in Paso Robles.

Ayres, who wouldn't comment on the cost of the new hotel, said his family's firm picked the Civic Center development for their new location because of its proximity to the 450,000-square-foot Hyundai headquarters, the I-405 Freeway, John Wayne Airport and the community of Fountain Valley itself.

Ayres said the construction was relatively on-schedule, despite delays in approvals at the planning commission and city council level as some residents complained.

"It's tough to build these things these days," he said.