Santa Ana on the Go With Civic Renewal

Santa Ana takes second billing in the name of the new shopping center that opens next month on the site of the venerable Santa Ana Fashion Square, but city officials aren’t complaining.

Anchored by the city’s first Nordstrom department store--opening Friday along with J. W. Robinson’s--the shopping segment of MainPlace Santa Ana represents a $90-million investment in a city that is seeing a great deal of commercial development these days.

The third department store anchor, Bullock’s, has remained open during renovation. The center will open Sept. 26 with 85 stores, with room for 170.

Among the units opening in the first phase are a Festival Marketplace with a branch of Roger’s Gardens and Christian’s Farmers Market, and a six-screen AMC movie complex.

The architect of MainPlace Santa Ana is the Jerde Partnership, the Los Angeles-based firm that designed San Diego’s Horton Plaza shopping center and created the graphics for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

“Open for Business” is the no-nonsense motto of this city of 230,000, county seat of Orange County since 1889, when it was carved out of Los Angeles County.

Santa Ana now has more than 5.3 million square feet of office space, with the total increasing rapidly.

Last year, only unincorporated Orange County, with building permit valuation totals of $841,268,795, and Irvine, with $386,271,043, racked up a greater valuation total in Orange County than Santa Ana’s $370,851,914.

Anaheim, the county’s largest city, with about 240,000 residents, had a building permit valuation total of $222,502,708 last year.

City on the Rebound

From its low point in the early 1970s, when a combination of an aging central core in Santa Ana and the rapid development of such nearby communities as Irvine and Costa Mesa brought development to a near halt, Santa Ana is rebounding with significant projects such as:

--The $400-million MainPlace Santa Ana mixed-use project at the Garden Grove (22), Santa Ana (5) and Orange (57) freeways, by JMB/Federated Realty and Henry T. Segerstrom, a project that will include a hotel and office buildings in addition to the shopping center.

--The $300-million, 46-acre Hutton Centre mixed-use complex near the Newport (55) Freeway at Main Street and MacArthur Boulevard. The latest element, 4 Hutton Centre, an 11-story office building, is scheduled for a December completion.

--The $200-million, 10.6-acre Xerox Centre at the southeast corner of 4th Street and the Santa Ana Freeway.

--The $100-million, 1-million-square-foot McDonnell Douglas development south of Edinger Avenue and east of Grand Avenue.

--The $90-million Griffin Towers near Hutton Centre, with 560,000 square feet of office space in two 12-story towers.

--The $50-million Santa Ana Auto Mall on Edinger Avenue west of the Newport Freeway, and 73 other projects described in a book published by the city’s Community Development Agency.

The foundation for today’s growth dates back to 1973, when the City Council established the Downtown Redevelopment Area, the city’s first, and one of the largest concentrated commercial revitalization efforts in the state during the 1970s, according to Mayor Dan Young.

In addition to making an all-out effort to retain as much of its financial base as possible, this project saw the creation of senior citizen apartments like Santa Ana Towers and Rosswood Villa apartments, market-rate condominiums like the 318-unit Town Square Condominiums; office buildings, medical facilities, parking structures, transit centers--including Transit Tower at 5th Street and Santa Ana Boulevard.

Also, a six-story office building atop the Santa Ana Transit Terminal--and retail projects such as Mercado/Paseo, the Second Street Pedestrian Mall and Fiesta Marketplace.

All this is being accomplished without destroying the historic buildings in this more-than-100-year-old city, according to Rob Richardson, economic development specialist with the city and an architecture buff.

Historic Structures

He points to such historic structures as the W. H. Spurgeon Building on 4th Street near Broadway, with its distinctive clock tower, and the old Orange County Courthouse, strongly influenced by Henry H. Richardson, a major architect of the 19th Century (no relation to Rob Richardson).

There are almost 50 buildings listed in a booklet entitled, “Downtown Santa Ana Historic District Walking Tour” published last year by Heritage Orange County Inc., 106 W. 4th St., Santa Ana.

“Santa Ana has more historic buildings than all the other cities in Orange County put together,” said Richardson, who lives with his wife in an old house not far from the Civic Center. “Maybe being neglected for so long isn’t all bad; it certainly helped preserve the significant 36-square-block downtown area that in 1984 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

Four other redevelopment areas were added in 1982, according to City Manager David N. Ream: Intercity, a 536-acre tract east of downtown, bordering the Santa Ana Freeway; North Harbor, a 428-acre site west of the Santa Ana River, near Garden Grove; South Harbor, a 1,050-acre area bordering Costa Mesa, north of the San Diego (405) Freeway and east of the river, and South Main, the largest, with 1,485 acres, containing Hutton Centre, Griffin Towers and the Auto Mall.

Ream is constantly battling stereotypes, a necessary step in a city whose population is almost 50% Latino, and allowing for the snobbery of communities with fewer minority residents.

“We have stable neighborhoods with excellent houses and--like any big city--we have places that need a lot of work,” Ream said. “The city is served by four different school districts, including the Santa Ana Unified School District, and the outlying areas are like the outlying areas of any sizable town.”

Fiesta Marketplace

Still, developers would be shortsighted if they ignored the profitable Latino market. Santa Ana’s answer is the $8.6-million Fiesta Marketplace, under construction of four square blocks bounded by 3rd, Bush, 5th and French streets at the eastern edge of downtown.

Designed by McClellan Cruz Gaylord & Associates and developed by Fiesta Marketplace Partners, the project will have about 190,000 square feet of leasable space, including about 100,000 square feet of retail.

The city’s involvement includes underwriting $550,000 in public improvements and the construction of a $4.2-million parking structure.