CHECKING IN WITH...SHAHEEN SADEGHI:

Search Google for the Lab and Camp shopping centers in Costa Mesa, and you’ll often find them referred to as “anti-mall” and “alternative.” However, Shaheen Sadeghi, the owner and founder of the South on Bristol Entertainment, Culture and Arts (SoBeCa) District, doesn’t expect them to look bohemian forever. Organic-themed stores and sustainable building materials, he believes, are becoming the norm, and just last month, Sadeghi’s company won a contract to develop the Centennial Mills riverside project in downtown Portland.

Your plan for Centennial Mills reads a lot like SoBeCa in many ways — a lot of restaurants and outdoor markets, a high emphasis on arts and sustainable building. Is there anything you’re planning to do in Portland that you haven’t done in Costa Mesa?

What we thought in Portland, as we started looking at the landscape and culture, is Portland is becoming a center for culinary culture. You’re having chefs from New York and San Francisco moving to Portland and opening restaurants.

There’s also a dynamic cottage industry when it comes to raw materials, small farms. So we think there’s a real opportunity to tap into that culinary arts world with this project. The opportunity we see in Portland that we may not have in Orange County is the topography there really lays out beautifully. This is a historic site on the river. The idea of having an old mill that we can now re-energize to adapt and reuse into a modern food center, it’s exciting. It’s taking the old flour mill, which was about food production, and reinventing it.

When you proposed the SoBeCa District to the city a few years ago, you said you envisioned an area that was pedestrian-friendly, full of retail and living spaces and low on industrial sites. What’s the status of the area now?

We have really a long-term vision for the area. The challenge for us in this area — and we’ve been in this area almost 15 years now — has been with the dynamics of the real estate market the last five to 10 years. It’s very difficult for us to be able to assemble more pieces.

I think we’re dealing with traditional, older property owners who have no desire for change or to sell, and so the transition has taken us longer than we would have hoped. Our overlay plan affects a 39-acre area, but we only own about 14 acres right now.

How do you draw the line between the Lab and the Camp? In other words, does anyone ever approach you wanting to start a business at the Lab, and you tell them, “No, that would be more appropriate for the Camp”?

I think we’re a merchant by heart. My wife and I, when we started the company, came out of the surf industry. We’d spent 20 years in the manufacturing world, so that gives us a competitive edge in regards to merchandising tenants and products. So I think we’re definitely product-driven more than tenant-driven.

In the case of the Camp, our focus there is to present more of an organic product. The project is sustainable. It’s what we call human power sports, which is surfing, biking, hiking, diving, yoga, a vegan restaurant, a raw food restaurant. The Lab, although it’s recycled and also sustainable, is more targeting a younger customer. But it’s definitely driven by fashion.

Have you always been an environmentalist?

You know, I think a lot of people who come out of the surfing industry, they were the original environmentalists. I think a lot of my peers are interested in clean oceans, because you surf in there. But that kind of rolled into what’s happening with the ocean, and that translated into how we treat our sewage, and that translated into the environment and the air.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.