Irvine, Where Not Much Is Left to Chance : Orderly growth with consistent architecture, open space and lots of room to do business.

By RUSS WILES

Aug. 20, 1989 12 AM PT

<i> Wiles is a free-lance writer from Irvine. </i>

To get an idea of how fast Irvine has grown, think back to the late 1960s. Orange County was already big enough to support a major league baseball team and Disneyland, but Irvine didn’t even have a supermarket.

Early residents such as Mary Lou and Ed Chavez, who moved into the area from Laguna Beach in 1966, had to drive to Corona del Mar, Tustin or Costa Mesa for groceries, and they couldn’t take the San Diego Freeway, because it hadn’t yet been extended through the area.

“It was quite an event in our lives when we finally got a store and a gas station,” recalled Mary Lou, a retired elementary school teacher.

Today, Irvine has its share of supermarkets, gas stations and other trappings of development. The population stands at about 100,000, up from 62,000 in 1980. During a stretch in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Irvine was the state’s fastest-growing city. And there’s more to come: By the turn of the century, planners estimate the city will have 225,000 residents.

Earned National Reputation

The city’s business development has been equally impressive. Already, four of Orange County’s six largest publicly held companies call Irvine home. More firms are being lured to the Irvine Spectrum, an ambitious business park now taking shape at the junction of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways.

Irvine has earned a national reputation as a carefully thought-out city. A zealous master plan has kept growth orderly and property values rising. But critics see in the greenbelts and consistent architecture a community sapped of vitality.

An article in The Washington Post last year complained that Irvine “is a place with no possibility of surprise, or chance, no spontaneous diversity.” The story loosely compared the city with the Stepford wives--”perfect in a horrifying sort of way.”

Residents bristle at such criticism.

“The people who write that Irvine has no character come from places with billboards, junkyards and body shops, and they’re trying to rationalize why they live where they do,” said Joyce Birdwell, a senior engineering designer at Printronix Inc., an Irvine-based firm that builds computer printers.

Birdwell first heard about the city in the mid-’80s while living in Houston, and what she heard was mostly positive. She moved to Irvine about three years ago after a short stay in El Segundo.

Ed DeLeonardis, a radiologist who grew up in Glendale, moved to Irvine with his wife and three children four years ago. He concedes that Irvine has a reputation problem with certain outsiders.

Ban on Billboards

“Some people go out of their way to put down Irvine as a place full of yuppies and status-oriented people,” DeLeonardis said. “But I don’t think Irvine’s all that different from other areas with similar income levels.”

If Irvine looks homogenous, it’s because of the planning and zoning controls. Besides banning billboards, the city makes sure that television antennas are kept out of sight and telephone lines underground. Irvine has numerous parks, and nearly every boulevard has landscaping, which helps hide gas stations and other unsightly business establishments.

In most neighborhoods people can’t paint their homes an unapproved color or keep a recreation vehicle parked for long on the street.

These measures and features have come in response to the blight created in other Southern California communities.

“Safeguards have been put in regarding landscaping and traffic so that you don’t have billboards and harsh streetscapes, as in a lot of older areas,” DeLeonardis said. Most Irvine residents seem to accept these restrictions as a way to keep property values up.

Despite the rapid growth of the past two decades, Irvine still has plenty of crop land interspersed among developments. This open space harks back to the area’s agricultural origin.

Gold Rush Merchant

In 1864, four men, led by James Irvine--a Scots-Irish immigrant who had become a successful San Francisco merchant during the Gold Rush--purchased parts of three Spanish-Mexican land grants and used the property to raise sheep.

Six years later, Irvine bought out his partners. In 1894, his son, J. I. Irvine, incorporated this land into the Irvine Co. and started to shift the focus to crop production.

By the turn of the century, a settlement of tenant farmers had taken root in what’s now the eastern part of town, near where Sand Canyon Avenue crosses under the Santa Ana Freeway. Several historic buildings, including a lima bean-packing plant, have been renovated as part of Old Town Irvine.

Today, the Irvine Co. continues to lease land to tenant farmers, who grow oranges, strawberries, asparagus, bell peppers and other crops in various fields scattered around the city.

And despite the pressures of suburbanization, agriculture won’t disappear entirely from the scene. Last year, the Irvine Co. agreed to transfer 8,000 acres of open space to the city--much of it crop land--in return for various development concessions.

‘Still a Bit Isolated’

Residents generally applaud the decision to preserve some open space.

“One unique aspect of Irvine is that we’re still a bit isolated,” DeLeonardis said. Farmland greets motorists coming into the city from either direction on the Santa Ana Freeway. “You know when you’re entering and leaving town,” he said.

Around Turtle Rock, on Irvine’s southwestern flank, much of the open land has been kept wild. Vicki Weatherhead, a secretary who has lived in Turtle Rock with her family since 1975, still spots a variety of wildlife, including coyotes and red-tail hawks.

“And we’ve have quails eating in our back yard,” she said.

Unlike the other developed parts of Irvine, Turtle Rock is hilly and relatively isolated. Perhaps this explains why some Turtle Rock residents have become so tightly knit, Weatherhead said.

On each major holiday, for instance, the people on her street throw a potluck block party. On average, about 30 residents and guests show up. “This has been going on since before I moved in,” she said.

High Property Prices

Blessed by geography, Turtle Rock has become Irvine’s priciest area. The most expensive residential properties run about $1 million, according to Ruth Jacobs, an agent at ERA-Main Street Realty. That’s well above the $306,000 median price for a detached house in Irvine.

On the low end of the city’s price scale, a three-bedroom, two-bath house in El Camino, a neighborhood near the Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, can be bought for $225,000, Jacobs added.

Irvine condominiums sell for a median price of $158,000. The range is from $115,000 for a two-bedroom unit in a development called Orangetree, near Irvine Valley College, to $750,000 or so for a four-bedroom view condo in Turtle Rock.

Overall, housing prices in Irvine jumped 36% during the 12 months ending last May. The rate of increase has since slowed, and properties are staying on the market a bit longer, Jacobs said. “There’s a lot more inventory than there was last year at this time.”

Buyers From Outside

Rich Steinhoff, a broker at ERA-Main Street Realty, said the hefty price jumps of the recent past have put Irvine out of reach of many first-time buyers. “The market is mostly move-up,” he said, and the vast majority of buyers come from outside the city.

Why are people attracted to Irvine?

Residents are quick to recite a checklist of items they like about their city: cleanliness, open space, order, an extensive network of bike trails, numerous recreational facilities and low crime (the third-safest place in Orange County, according to a recent state report).

Irvine’s public education system also gets high marks. Two high schools (Woodbridge and University) have been recognized for excellence in education by the federal government.

The people who live in Irvine also boast about--of all things--the city’s growing role as an entertainment center. Top musicians regularly perform at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater.

University Offerings

The acrobatic Blue Angels put on aerial shows at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station which borders Irvine. Then there’s The Improv, one of Orange County’s few comedy clubs, and Wild Rivers, an aquatic amusement park.

Above all, UC Irvine features a steady offering of concerts, plays, speeches and sporting events. “Most communities don’t have a major university in their back yard,” DeLeonardis noted.

But it wasn’t always like this. David Howitt, an electrical contractor who moved his family down from Santa Barbara in 1971, remembers University High’s Friday night football games as the main social event in the area.

“You went whether you had kids at the school or not,” he said.

Of the problems brought by rapid development, longtime residents seem to complain about traffic most. The Chavezes still remember when they used to drive the length of Culver Drive, Irvine’s main drag, without seeing another car. Today, motorists can’t go far without getting slowed by traffic or the many left-hand-turn stoplights on the busy thoroughfare.

Caught Off Guard

DeLeonardis believes Irvine’s planners have been caught off guard by the general increase in vehicular volume.

For example, now that Alton Parkway has been extended to the Saddleback Valley, providing commuters from the south with an alternative to the San Diego Freeway, surface traffic has increased in Irvine.

“That has caught some planners and politicians by surprise,” said DeLeonardis. As a result, he figures that city officials will more carefully scrutinize the impact of future road extensions.

The El Toro Marine base creates a different sort of problem for residents in the eastern part of the city.

“Jets fly out of the base, occasionally at 3 in the morning, and so low that the house shakes,” said Cathleen Mattie, who rents a condo in the Northwood section of Irvine. Even so, Mattie likes the city, and she considers rental rates in the area reasonable. “You get a lot more for the money than in Costa Mesa,” she said.

Rule Out Move-Up

Mattie graduated two years ago from Cal State Fullerton, and now works as publications coordinator at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. She said she would like to buy in Irvine someday but sees a definite affordability problem. “Buying isn’t in the works right now,” she said.

Even some established homeowners don’t believe they can afford to trade up in Irvine. Birdwell views herself in that situation, despite a large increase in the value of her one-bedroom Northwood condo since she purchased it in 1987.

“I’m definitely happy about the appreciation, but to sell my unit and buy another place in Irvine is totally out of the question,” she said.

Howitt and his wife came to the same conclusion, but they decided to take the money and move. The Howitts recently sold their home in The Ranch, one of Irvine’s first neighborhoods, for $272,000. They had paid $33,000 for the 1,800-square-foot property in 1971.

The Howitts are moving to Menifee, a new planned community in Riverside County. In part, they decided to leave Irvine to cash in on their home’s appreciation. But also, they want to rediscover the quiet life they once enjoyed in Orange County.

“All in all, Irvine’s still a pretty fine city,” Howitt said. “But I guess you’d call us country people at heart.”

AT A GLANCEPopulation

1989 estimate: 100,803

1980-89 change: + 57.9%

Median age: 32.7 years

Racial/ethnic mix

White: 80.4%

Other: 9.6%

Latino: 8.6%

Black: 1.4%

Annual income

Per capita: $22,907