Standing at home

S.J. Cahn

Hard hats perched atop their heads, two of the city’s leading

businessmen stood in the middle of a dusty construction site on

Thursday, broad smiles building across their faces.

Before them arose the reason for their enthusiasm: the first walls

of Emulex’s new corporate headquarters at Home Ranch.

“That’s what’s fun to watch,” said Henry Segerstrom, managing

partner of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, as a crane slowly lifted a

22-foot-high, 50-ton concrete wall into the air.

As it dangled, Emulex Chairman Paul Folino put a hand on

Segerstrom’s shoulder, a gesture he would repeat every few minutes as

the duo, dressed in closely matching pinstriped suits, watched the

wall fall into place.

Thursday marked Folino’s 10th year with the company.

“It’s a special day,” he said. “I can’t think of a better way to

spend it than with Henry at this site, watching the walls go up.”

The road to this day had, at times, been as rough as the

hard-packed dirt the two strode across in their polished dress shoes.

It took nearly two decades for a development to rise from the lima

bean fields of Home Ranch. There were three different projects,

including designs for high-rise buildings. There was a failed

referendum. And finally, this.

Along with Emulex’s 180,000 square feet of office space, the Home

Ranch development at Susan Street and South Coast Drive includes an

Ikea furniture store -- which loomed, partially painted, in the

distance -- other industrial buildings and 192 homes.

Segerstrom, who has watched many walls rise as he helped develop

large swaths of Costa Mesa, from South Coast Plaza to the Orange

County Performing Arts Center, said seeing the first moments of work

never grows old.

“This is wonderful,” he said while surveying the land. “This is

what community development and growth is all about.”

It is also, for the Segerstrom family, an end to growth. With the

Home Ranch development, essentially all of their land is now

developed.

But Segerstrom seemed little inclined to begrudge any notion of

the past being lost.

“I think at the end of the line, so to speak, they are excellent

land uses,” he said, stressing the prestige of having Emulex as a

tenant and its importance for the economic health of Costa Mesa.

Emulex is planning an October or November move into its new home,

Folino said.

“This will be the Emulex for the next several decades,” he said.

Having checked out their future together, Folino and Segerstrom

then went ahead with a quick lunch of salmon and salad, laid out

under a white canopy on the construction site.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at s.j.cahn@latimes.com.