IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
A Corona homebuilder has purchased an infill property in Upland where it plans to build 42 single-family homes.
Meritage Homes Corp. paid approximately $7.5 million for 10 acres on 19th Street immediately west of North Campus Avenue, said Les Whittlesey, founding principal with WD Land Inc. in Irvine.
The seller was Upland Roses LLC, a private investment group. The transaction, which WD Land helped arrange, closed Jan. 3.
Originally, the land was to have been a retail parcel in Rose Terrace, a housing development built by Upland Roses. However, a re-routing of 19th Street and the parcel’s proximity to The Colonies, the major retail project next to the Foothill Freeway, made it impractical to use the property for commercial purposes, Whittlesey said.
“It won’t work for retail but it will work for housing,” said Whittlesey, who said he started working on the sale in 2005. “It’s a big parcel for Upland, and a great location for single-family [homes].”
The parcel is currently raw land that must still be graded, and one building must be torn down before construction can begin. Home prices will start at about $600,000, Whittlesey said.
The property, which has been divided into 42 lots of approximately 7,000 square feet each, has no streets on its south, east and west borders. Meritage Homes, which builds single-family homes throughout United States, agreed to develop fewer homes on the parcel in order to get the project approved, Whittlesey said.
