O.C. Great Park's Commitment to Open Space Persists Despite Revenue Challenges

We last interviewed you in February of 2006. A lot has happened in that time: you released your master plan, and you renewed your contract for the design of the park. What is the current status of the Orange County Great Park?

We completed the master plan in the last year and a half. It's gone through the public process, it's been through city agencies and county agencies, it's been approved by the city of Irvine's Planning Commission, and the one final last approval is from the Great Park Board of Directors. It's on their agenda for the 27th of September.

The other thing that's been happening in the last year and a half is that we've been building our team for the production of the project moving forward. We've been working on schematic design since late winter and through the spring and summer, and we have a 30 percent schematic deadline in October. The key thing that's happening at that point is that we will be working with the Board of Directors to determine the priorities for the first phase of construction. That first phase of construction will be going into construction documents in the beginning of next year.

How does the jurisdiction work between the city of Irvine and the Great Park Board of Directors? Are both entities giving you input into the design? Do they both have ultimate veto or approval power over the design plan?

The park is legally in the city of Irvine, so the park is governed by the city of Irvine in terms of city regulations and agencies. In terms of planning commissions, police departments, safety, building codes, and parking and traffic regulation, all that is governed by city agencies.

County agencies also have jurisdiction. The Orange County Fire Authority has authority, which actually supersedes the city of Irvine in terms of fire suppression and fire control. There's also some water management that is governed by the county, and the Irvine Ranch Water District. Some of the water management is actually governed at a state level of regulation. So there are several different levels of regulation. The Orange County Park Board of Directors is an advisory body that represents the larger constituencies of the county.

The L.A. Times recently printed an article describing the tremendous amount of input the public has been giving the Great Park design. What has the vetting process for all those ideas been like for your design team, the city, the board, and all the various private stakeholders during the planning process and approval process?

There was a basic level of park uses and programs embedded in the competition entries and in the master plan. Those are obvious kinds of things that you would expect to find in a park-mostly non-controversial things, like trails, jogging, picnic grounds, exercise areas, sports fields, and the cultural terrace. There's quite a bit of program that's been embedded and largely approved and accepted.

There's another level of programs conforming to the needs of the local governments and county residents. That has to do with the need for a sports park. There's a survey that indicates that we probably couldn't build enough soccer fields even if we tried. There's a huge demand for soccer fields. We're just trying to determine how much of that demand we can meet in the park.

Then there other programs that are probably, I would say, a little more optional in nature. Those are the ones that have been suggested by people; there are groups that are petitioning and saying, "We'd like to see this kind of facility or that kind of facility." Those are the ones where the board is working through a series of policy statements to help guide that decision process. The establishment of the policy issues is really important, because for the next 30 or 50 or 100 years, there will always be new ideas of programs that could or should be included in the park. The board and the city, in making decisions about what is appropriate or not, need to have some kind of policy basis for defining "appropriateness." So there's a big effort going on to define and describe those policies.

One of the concerns influencing the process at this point is the need to generate revenue. Are you at all concerned that some of the ideas on the table to generate revenue are going to require the plan to deviate from your original conception of an open expanse at the park?

There's always that risk. But I think the Board of Directors and the city are committed to the ideals and vision of the park as an open space for people to gather, and everyone is working in the same direction. But clearly, at the end of the day, revenue is an important part of the equation because money has to come from somewhere to operate the park, and I know the board and the council have made it clear that they're not going to raise taxes to operate the park. So there is a need to generate revenue.

There is a business plan being put together. Because the park is part of a redevelopment district, tax increments from the new development that Lennar is building around the park will generate a great deal of money over time.

Existent facilities in the park are already generating revenue, such as the parking of the RV trailers, and there's some agriculture tacked into the park that generates short-term revenue.

Long-term, there will be a list of other ways of generating revenue, and there are a couple possibilities on the table at this time. One is based on the model of the Central Park Conservancy. That is, there is a Great Park Conservancy that has been set up with the mission, primarily right now, of looking at a botanical garden, or perhaps some other facilities. Their mission is actually to generate private money to help pay for the park. That's an important part of the equation. There may also be some user fees for some uses such as parking in the park, which has been discussed.

For-profit-type recreation is also on the table, such as sports arena facilities. There will be things like food kiosks in the park that might generate revenue. This is a big issue, and it's something that we all struggle with.

What's the current status of the interface between the park and Lennar's adjacent housing development? In your last interview with TPR, you mentioned some of their transit-oriented ideas and some of their cultural ideas. Are those things still on the table?

The core of their neighborhood is pretty much the same as it was when we spoke a year-and-a-half ago. The thing that has really moving forward in an interesting way is that the city of Irvine has been advancing their dedicated guideway project, which is an urban streetcar transit system that would connect the Spectrum Mall with the Irvine Transit Center, where the Amtrak station is located, through the transit-oriented development, our cultural terrace, the sports park, and then up into Lennar's Lifelong Learning District. That's a very good thing for the park and for these neighborhoods, and it's actually moving forward very well.

Lennar has also proposed to move some of the densities around from their development district. They are in the process of submitting to the city what's called an amended overlay plan, and that would move densities around, allowing them to build more density at the transit-oriented development and the Lifelong Learning District, which would actually then be connected by the streetcar system.

In terms of urbanism, that proposal would provide a much more desirable density- and activity-based transit system. It would also reinforce the major, densely programmed parts of the park: the culture terrace and the sports park. So the amended overlay is something that has a great deal of appeal to it.

Because of the greater density that Lennar would get, that plan would actually generate more revenue for the developing, funding, and operating of the park, and it also provides some additional acreage to the park-another 131 acres on the north side of the park that would become park land, and some other, additional acreages that would become public property.

That's the biggest thing that's on the table. The Planning Commission for the city of Irvine is dealing with that. I think in perhaps six months they will have a ruling on that.

Looking forward in the development of the park, what's the current timeline for the park's construction and completion?

The park's deliverables include some interim projects that happened early on, like the observation balloon and temporary visitor center, which was completed this summer. The observation balloon allows people to come to the park and go to the visitor center, see exhibits about the park, go up in the balloon and actually watch the park under construction. It's inspired a little bit by the precedent in Berlin. When they were rebuilding Berlin after the fall of the wall, they built the "infobox" with the temporary visitor center that allowed people to watch the redevelopment of the Potsdamer Platz. The observation balloon is very much along that line of thinking. A lot of people can get into the park early on. The balloon will then become a permanent feature of the park.

We're also looking at some other early projects: maybe some gardens and some early sports fields that could happen within the next year. And then, we're really looking toward the first big project, phase one, coming online in 2009 or 2010. That will include backfilled infrastructure, a lot of utilities and streets, probably the major rough-grading of the canyon, the wildlife corridor, and the Agua Chinon, as well as the beginning of public facilities-probably the sports park and some of the neighborhood park areas.

What is your vision for the park? What do you now hope that this park can offer the region and Orange County?

It's not one simple thing. I think there are a couple of layers of what it's going to do. On an ecological level, it's tying together missing links in the ecological system, which connects the wildlife corridor and the drainage corridors between the Santa Ana Mountains and the Laguna Hills. That's the fundamental backbone of the park.

Layered on that is providing a place for people to connect with nature and the history of Orange County. From my perspective, one of the fundamentally important things is to have a social place for people in Orange County. I think one of the troubles in suburban metropolitan areas, such as Orange County, is that there's not a lot of public space in the traditional sense, where you come and meet other people. When we talk to people in Orange County, they talk about going to the mall or places like that to meet other people. Those are not truly public spaces in the civic sense. So I think that the Great Park has the great ambition and possibility of being truly public, of providing a great place for people to come and meet other people, a place of sharing ideas and identity in Orange County.