Buena Park’s longtime Amway Nutrilite training campus is officially headed for a full-scale makeover into a 281-unit neighborhood, complete with affordable apartments for seniors. City leaders this week signed off on a plan that would swap corporate training grounds for townhomes, duet homes and a four-story senior building, while labor groups pushed to make sure local workers get a fair shot at the jobs that come with it.
The project, led by Irvine-based Shopoff Realty Investments, will put 114 townhomes and 117 duet homes around a dedicated senior housing building on about 13.8 acres at 5600 Beach Boulevard. Fifty of the apartments in that senior building will be reserved as affordable units, a key detail that helped win over housing advocates and gave the developer access to a density bonus without expanding the project’s footprint.
What the council approved and why it matters
At its Tuesday meeting, the City Council voted unanimously to grant the entitlements needed to rezone the former Amway site and clear the way for the housing plan, according to the Los Angeles Times. The project filing on the state’s CEQA portal lays out a 281-unit buildout that includes 50 affordable senior apartments, 114 townhomes and 117 duets spread across roughly 13.8 acres, per the CEQA record.
Those 50 income-restricted senior units did more than score political goodwill. The CEQA documents show that including the affordable senior building allowed the developer to qualify for a density bonus, bumping up total homes while keeping the overall site plan relatively compact.
Who’s building it and what they paid
Shopoff Realty Investments bought the nearly 14-acre Amway campus last year for about $60 million and has teamed up with Lennar Homes to actually build out the neighborhood, according to industry materials. On its project site, Shopoff lays out conceptual site plans, parking counts, small parks and open spaces, along with a phased construction schedule that anticipates the first homes arriving sometime in 2029 to 2030…