Office Tower to Open in Orange’s The City

The $65-million, 20-story City Tower will open Monday in The City, a 174-acre business and residential center near the intersection of the Garden Grove (22) and Santa Ana (5) freeways in Orange.

The City, a $1-billion development, includes 2 million square feet of office space, a 670,000-square-foot enclosed shopping mall, a 460-room Doubletree Hotel, 9 banks and savings and loans, 5 stock brokerage firms, theaters, restaurants and 441 apartments.

City Tower is a joint venture of Tishman West Management Corp. and Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. In addition to acting as the leasing and management agent, Tishman West was also the general contractor.

Perry S. Herst Jr., president and chief executive officer of Tishman West, said the development represents a change in the character of central Orange County, making it a major office center.

“The City is a self-contained satellite city where you can live, work and play,” he said. “We are not servicing a downtown or main city core. This is also happening in Newport Beach and La Jolla and will happen in Warner Center (in the San Fernando Valley).”

Among the advantages of central Orange County, Herst said, is the availability of middle-class residents to work for the accountants and lawyers who will become tenants of the building. He also said that the area has less congestion than Newport Beach.

The tower stands at the north end of The City while the existing 18-story Bank of America building is at the south end.

Architect Daniel Dworsky of Dworsky Associates, Los Angeles, said the main shaft of the eight-sided tower features see-through blue glass and opaque blue and light-gray reflective glass.

Horizontal grooves in the two-story precast concrete base were designed to give a sense of the building’s scale to onlookers, Dworsky said.

Dworsky said the tower was positioned so as not to cast a shadow on the Crystal Cathedral during Easter sunrise services. The cathedral is located about a quarter of a mile west of the tower.