REAL ESTATE : Brinderson Towers Complex in Irvine Will Be Renamed

The name of the landmark Brinderson Towers office complex in Irvine is about to change: Workers began stripping the Brinderson name from the signs this week.

But a spokesman for developer Gary Brinderson, whose company built the $185-million black granite and glass complex in a joint venture with Equitable Life Assurance Co., says that the renaming does not reflect any financial or management difficulties at the complex.

“Brinderson asked that his name be removed when his company stopped managing the towers,” publicist Brooks Roddan said.

The towers were Brinderson Group’s major foray out of the world of heavy construction and into speculative real estate. Although construction of the first building was completed in 1987, just as the commercial real estate industry in Southern California began wilting, 95% of it is leased. The second building, 60% occupied, was completed in 1990, about the time the industry went from wilted to dead.

Brinderson, whose company managed the complex as part of the joint-venture arrangement, decided earlier this year to drop the contract and concentrate on its core business of heavy construction--building roads, power plants, industrial complexes and the like.

To date, no new name has been announced.

Brinderson Group built and still owns and manages the adjacent Brinderson Plaza, a pair of four-story office buildings that will continue to carry the Brinderson name.

Century 21 Sales: Richard Loughlin, president of Century 21 International in Irvine, says the 2,100 residential real estate offices that fly his company’s banner generally have seen an increase in business this spring and early summer.

The Southern California market remains the softest in the nation, he said, but in other areas--including the former bottom spots of Texas and Colorado, property values are appreciating and sales totals are climbing.

And if the Dallas, Houston and Denver markets can stage a comeback, Loughlin says, Orange County and the rest of Southern California are sure to recover.

Furthermore, Loughlin says, Century 21’s corporate economists do not see any really ominous signs on the horizon and are pooh-poohing the notion that the nation is headed back into a recession.

Construction Deal: Fieldstone Communities Inc., an arm of developer Fieldstone Group of Cos. in Newport Beach, has signed a deal to build 169 homes in a master-planned community in Temecula. Although active in Orange County and coastal San Diego County, Fieldstone has never built in Temecula.

The development is part of Kemper Community Development’s 1,377-acre Paloma Del Sol project. Plans call for 4,678 detached homes and 600,000 square feet of commercial office and retail space when the development is completed at the turn of the century.

Kemper Community Development, a subsidiary of Chicago’s giant Kemper Corp. insurance and financial services conglomerate, has been building homes in the development with its own construction company, Mesa Homes.

Fieldstone, the first outside builder in the project, expects to open sales and start construction in August.

Prices for the homes, which range in size from 1,400 to 1,900 square feet, will start “in the low $100,000s.” That’s developer language for “it’ll be less than $150,000.”