“It was a long time coming…a lifetime dream for me,” said Bernie Truax II, building owner and developer. “It has been in my brain for 40 years and we stayed true to the dream. We bought the property eight years ago and it has been in construction for two years. Now the building will be our headquarters.”
At the ribbon-cutting, Truax mentioned construction milestones that coincided with family birthdays. The ground-breaking occurred two years ago on his son’s (Bernie III) birthday, April 25. They topped steel on his (Bernie II) birthday, April 26. And finally, the building dedication and ribbon-cutting occurred on April 29, 2014, his grandson’s (Bernie IV) 14th birthday.
“It’s a great day for Temecula!” remarked City Manager Aaron Adams. “This is the culmination of lots of economic development success. Mr. Truax has made a significant commitment to business and jobs. This is what we envision as an example of the development of downtown.”
“This represents more growth for Old Town Temecula,” said Al Rubio, board member for the Temecula Chamber of Commerce. “The architecture fits in with the existing community.”
Peg Moore, chairwoman of the Old Town Local Review Board and a member of the very first Temecula City Council (1989-92), envisioned this type of building back in the 1980s. “It’s absolutely gorgeous and a great addition to Old Town.”
The outside of the building looks like a Hollywood movie set for “Dick Tracy” or a “Batman” sequel. The building façade and interior are a modern rendition of the classic 1920s art deco period with arched doorways, fluted columns and trim, inset tin ceiling squares, custom wainscoted and trimmed wall panels, hanging custom-made lamps, and so many more period-correct elegant touches everywhere one looks.
“This was my favorite architectural period,” said Truax.
“This is an exciting project!” exclaimed Joël Brodes, VP of real estate for Truax Development Group. “Class A office space should appeal to national types of businesses; it provides quality of construction and details, location, access, visibility, architecture that stands out, size and volume of space, technology infrastructure…it projects a certain image, a panache. As such, it represents a different list of potential tenants and a different approach to filling the space.”
The building provides a mix of Class A office space with high-visibility retail below.
“We are looking for unique concepts, boutique-type businesses, trends that will be successful that create more interest to drive the momentum of downtown energy and center of life,” said Brodes. “Office, and City Hall, will feed the retail, but retail will drive the traffic and the business in Old Town. We are looking for a holistic integration with the demographic of Temecula on the upswing.”
The bottom floor will house a high-end restaurant (rumored to be Mediterranean cuisine); Brodes hopes to attract a bank for one of the spaces and unique retail businesses for the others, perhaps high-end spa salons or organic food/juice bars.
The second floor is still under construction, but they have already received interest for part of the floor from an international company doing business in 95 countries. They have generated a large number of leads of businesses interested in looking at the space.
The entire third floor has already been leased to a technology firm, Cengage Learning out of Boston, Massachusetts. Cengage’s online learning division, “ed2go” already had offices in Temecula near the county library (off of Ynez Rd). The company is the largest publisher of digital and print textbooks for K-12 and colleges. They specialize in online learning and continuing education and partners with over 2,000 colleges and universities, including 1,100 of the 1,200 community colleges in the nation.
A planned consolidation of their Ft Worth, Texas offices coincided with the completion of the Truax Building.
“We were looking for a space that could accommodate high-tech development of our digital products,” said Brian Bales, director of marketing. “We really wanted to stay in Temecula and this was the only space that could work for us. We would have had to look in San Diego.”
The access to Old Town restaurants and businesses was a huge attraction as well.
