It’s not yesterday’s Great Park.
That’s part of the message Great Park Chairman Mike Carroll plans to deliver on Tuesday evening, May 6, during a State of the Park address in front of an expected crowd of more than 2,000 people.
For years, the park has been defined by acres of sports fields and its signature big orange balloon that gives passengers an aerial view of Orange County.
But many more signature amenities are coming to the park in the years ahead — about $1 billion worth, in fact — and Carroll wants to tell you about them.
“Tuesday’s the day we let everyone know we’re a lot more than a balloon and some sports fields,” Carroll said, “We’re a major metropolitan park on the build.”
“Behind these fences,” he said during an interview at the park Monday, pointing to a large construction zone by the Wild Rivers water park, “is a world-class park taking shape.”
Irvine calls that area under construction the “Heart of the Park,” meaning that if you’ve been to the Great Park at all, you haven’t seen anything like what it could become.
In all, the Great Park — at the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Irvine — will be more than 1,300 acres.
It’ll be bigger than San Diego’s Balboa Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and New York City’s Central Park.
Yet, visits to the Great Park probably haven’t felt that significant. That’s because only a fraction of the park has been developed.
Carroll acknowledged in an interview Monday that building the Great Park got off to a “bumpy first couple of years” and that Tuesday’s event is a “bit of a reboot.”
Orange County voters approved the idea for a central park, nature preserve and multi-use development at the site of the former air base back in 2002. That plan won out over an idea to convert the base into an international airport much larger than John Wayne Airport.
Over two decades, private developers have built up thousands of units of housing around the park, but the city has been slower to bring amenities into the park itself.
Carroll, who in 2019 joined the Irvine City Council, which oversees the park, said the dissolution of redevelopment agencies in California in 2012 caused financing issues, which in turn caused delays.
Then, after the city recovered from that to develop the sports complex and related amenities, including the 5,000-seat soccer stadium home to the OC Soccer Club, the coronavirus pandemic “really put everything on hold for a bit,” he said.
Nevertheless, Carroll believes the park’s doldrums are behind it, and a golden age of construction lies ahead.
“Each and every major metropolitan park in America took decades to come to life,” Carroll said. “I’m excited that it’s officially go time for the Great Park.”
Financing for the park comes from community and redevelopment-related funds, city bonds and a community facilities district tax levied on residents near the Great Park in the Altair, Cadence Park and Novel Park neighborhoods.
Currently, the city of Irvine is building out 800 additional acres of the park, adding 22 acres of cascading lakes with waterfalls, islands and a shorefront restaurant to which diners will be able to boat up to or paddle up to in canoes.
Nearby will be a 10,000-person-capacity amphitheater, set to open in 2028, which will replace the temporary Great Park Live venue that opened last year and will become a sort of “Irvine Meadows 2.0,” Carroll said.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to have many of our citywide events and graduations here,” he added as staffers explained how the dug-in nature of the amphitheater and the placement of buildings will help insulate the sound from nearby neighborhoods.
On the other side of the lakes, the city plans to add an arboretum and botanical garden, a veterans memorial, a retail center and, eventually, a central library.
“Every great city needs to have a great library,” Carroll said.
A part of the park known as the cultural terrace, which broke ground last year, will become home to the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, the Pretend City Children’s Museum, the Orange County Music & Dance school and a forthcoming Asian American history museum.
These spaces will open over the next few years, with the city working to launch many of the venues by the time the Olympics come to Southern California in 2028, Assistant City Manager Sean Crumby said.
“It’s such a diversity — museums, parks, retail, sports — it’s tremendous,” Carroll said. “I think this can be the finest metropolitan park in America.”
Tuesday’s event — at Great Park Live — will showcase all these attributes in virtual reality, but the biggest tech draw is something else entirely. It’s the chance to step inside a Whoosh cable car, the centerpiece of what could become the park’s futuristic transportation system.
In April, the City Council approved entering into negotiations with Swyft Cities to build an autonomous elevated cable transit network that could ferry visitors around the park.
Dubbed the “Whoosh” system, cars in the battery-powered aerial transit system can reach up to 30 mph and could eventually take people from the nearby Metrolink station across the 4-mile-square park in a matter of minutes.
The Whoosh system has not been built anywhere else in the world, but another pilot project is underway in Queenstown, New Zealand.
The Great Park Board on Tuesday, April 22 approved entering into negotiations with Swyft Cities to build an autonomous elevated cable transit network, dubbed the Whoosh system, that could ferry passengers around the park. (Courtesy of Whoosh Hold LP)While Irvine has only just begun to negotiate with Swyft Cities, both parties have expressed interest in a deal where Swyft Cities would front the cost for the initial segment of the park’s Whoosh system in exchange for naming it as “the transportation module for the Great Park.”
The initial segment would connect the park’s visitor center to The Canopy retail area, a stretch estimated to cost almost $10 million and that could move nearly 3,000 people per hour, co-founder Clay Griggs said.
Griggs said the Great Park system could eventually include 12 stations and move up to 10,000 people per hour around the entire park.
The city would need to spend an estimated $40 million more to make that happen.
At an April council meeting, Crumby said the city has looked at other transportation options for the park, such as trams, people movers and bus circulators. The Whoosh system, in early estimates, would be cheaper and less disruptive to existing ground infrastructure, according to city staffers.
Representatives from the company, as well as from the forthcoming Great Park museums and the Anaheim Ducks (due to their connection with Great Park Ice), will all be at Tuesday’s family friendly showcase.
The State of the Great Park runs from 4 to 7 p.m. Live music and refreshments will be provided.
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