Lennar Wins Bid for Marine Base

Homebuilder Lennar Corp. has placed the winning bid for $650 million to purchase Heritage Fields, a former Marine Corps base in Irvine, Calif., that includes approximately 3,400 homesites and commercial properties over 1,300 acres.Partners in the venture are LNR Property Corp., Rockpoint Real Estate Fund I LLC, Blackacre Institutional Capital Management LLC, and MSD Capital LP. "We believe this is an excellent opportunity to develop a premier community in one of the nation's most desirable and supply-constrained homebuilding markets," said Emile Haddad, California regional president of Lennar. The acquisition brings to seven the number of Lennar and LNR military reuse projects since 1998. The Irvine community plan includes multiple single-family residential products with prices ranging from $350,000 to over $2 million. Lennar said it expects to option a portion of the homesites and anticipates that new-home deliveries will begin in fiscal 2008.