Building A Better Long Beach: Oceanaire Developer Anticipates June Opening

By: Brandon Richardson

In 2006, Miami-based home construction and real estate firm Lennar purchased a surface parking lot in Downtown Long Beach and gained approvals to construct a 22-story residential tower with for-sale units. Those plans were abandoned when the Great Recession hit, and subsidiary Lennar Multifamily Communities (LMC) stepped in to develop the project that has taken shape between Ocean Boulevard and Seaside Way today – Oceanaire.

“What we’ve seen in Downtown Long Beach since 2006 is just such a cool transformation,” Ethen Thacher, director of development for LMC, told the Business Journal. “It’s a product that our entire company is excited to start leasing up,” he said of Oceanaire, which is scheduled to be completed in June.

Located at 150 W. Ocean Blvd. between Pine and Pacific avenues, the seven-story, 216-unit building designed by architecture firm Togawa Smith Martin and built by Zwick Construction consists of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units. Thacher noted that featuring units with three bedrooms was a request by city officials in order to accommodate families wanting to live in the downtown core – an option not present in most other multi-family developments in the area.

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