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Canadian Developer Had Biggest Impact on Real Estate Here in Years
The man who spurred the most remarkable real estate trend here in 2004-or in recent memory, for that matter-isn't an icon of Orange County real estate. He's an Italian immigrant to Canada.
Natale "Nat" Bosa is building the county's first luxury condominium towers in Irvine. His bold plan to bring high-rise living to decidedly low-rise OC has put other developers in a race to be next.
"I got to hand it to him for having the guts to do it," said Walter Hahn, a real estate economist with the Irvine office of Ernst & Young.
For years, Bosa has built high-rise condos in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. More recently, he's built them in San Diego.
But real estate executives and industry experts were taken aback in the summer of 2003 when he unveiled plans to build twin 18-story towers in Irvine.
The obstacles were tremendous, critics said. Condo towers are costly and hard to build, they said. People in OC preferred their own homes and yards was the conventional wisdom. Skeptics doubted people would pay luxury prices to live in a high-rise in Irvine, of all places.
Bosa's belief was that demographics in OC and all of Southern California had shifted.
Young families that once epitomized the growth of suburban OC had aged. Many now were older and affluent and might prefer to swap yard work for a condo with 24-hour services and security. Within walking distance would be shops and eateries.
So far, Bosa appears right.
In 2004, buyers signed contracts and paid deposits on nearly all of Bosa's 232 condos under construction at Park Place, a sprawling commercial campus at the corner of Jamboree Road and Michelson Drive.
Buyers should start moving in a year from now, Bosa said.
The...