Irvine’s Continental Fantasy: the Rue de Von Karman

Personally, I think the idea of bringing Paris to Irvine is fabulous.

In case you missed it, here’s what I’m talking about.

Last week, Irvine officials and their assorted consultants, advisers, associates, planners and specialists announced a plan to build their city a real downtown.

(Those of you who have traveled may know what that means. In a real downtown, for example, they don’t allow more than two frozen yogurt shops on the same block, there is no place for stores such as Barstools Unlimited, and at any given time, there is at least one work crew tearing up the pavement with jackhammers.)

So you see how this is a radical concept for Irvine. Which is why they can’t just come out and say it.

(How do you think the Irvine City Council pushed through that ban on Styrofoam? Who would have guessed that was what chlorofluorocarbon meant?)

So here’s what Irvine did with its radical downtown idea. It issued the Irvine Business Complex Composite Sketch Plan.

I tell you, I didn’t have to read beyond the opening paragraph to know thata it was a master stroke. The guys who wrote this should be working for the government.

Come to think of it, they are working for the government.

“The IBC will be characterized by its mix of uses, including housing, employment, shopping and cultural and recreation activities. In addition to the introduction of a variety of uses, the IBC will be woven together by a network of urban design framework elements and transportation networks, creating an exciting and truly urban environment.”

You get that? Of course not. I tell you, those guys are geniuses.

So, let me translate. In Irvine, that means Paris.

How do I know that? I actually ventured beyond the opening paragraph and there I spotted it: Dissension in the ranks.

That’s right. I discovered evidence of a tear, albeit a small one, in the United Front of Irvine Bureaucrats Working for the Obfuscation of the Populace at Large.

You see, further down in the IBC Composite Sketch Plan, right under the subheading “The Great Street,” is this straight talk:

“Paris has the Champs Elysees, San Francisco has Market Street and Boston has Commonwealth Avenue. Von Karman is planned to be Irvine’s Great Street. . . .”

You guessed it. Some plain-talking dissident probably let loose a computer virus that inserted those words just as they were about to be printed out.

Not even the muddling follow-through--”Because of its mix of uses, distinctive urban design characteristics and public transit nodes, Von Karman will be a place of citywide and regional importance”--could cloud the fact that Irvine has Parisian fantasies.

Well, naturally, newspaper reporters being no dummies, the day after the IBC Complex Composite Sketch Plan hit the briefing table, newspapers all over Orange County were trumpeting the news that Irvine was working on a prototype of the Champs Elysees.

It wasn’t that I doubted Irvine’s vision (think back to the Styrofoam ban), it’s just that I was a little intrigued by the process.

So I made a few calls, starting with the public relations person the city hired to sell its plan on an unsavvy Populace at Large (PAL).

I asked if she could put me in touch with the person, or persons, responsible for writing the IBC Composite Sketch Plan.

“You mean the actual verbiage?” she asked me.

So I was on the right track. Verbiage is code for words.

Then before too long, Irvine’s principal city planner, Steve Letterly, who has been in charge of the downtown project for the past three months, gave me a call.

I asked him about the Champs Elysees.

“They should have never put that in!” he said, rather excitedly I thought, especially for a city planner.

“We told them not to put that in!” he went on. “That’s all I’ve been hearing about, that we are trying to rival Paris. Obviously, Irvine can’t compare with Paris, or Boston.”

“So who put in the part about the Champs Elysees?” I asked.

“Oh, the consultants,” he said, rather dismissively. “They should have never put that in!”

OK, I sensed what was coming, but I asked Letterly how he would have explained the concept of Irvine’s Great Street, and the truth is, I sort of zoned out on most of his answer.

(We had already gone over the multi-modal transit node, the integrated fixed guideway and the High Occupancy Vehicle). But what did stick with me was the part about how this Great Street should “function with the community.”

This Latterly repeated several times. The Champs Elysees was out. Functioning was in.

So I guess this means that in future updates of the IBC Composite Sketch Plan, tighter controls will be placed on computer access. No more comparing Irvine with the world’s great cities.

Too bad. I was looking forward to strolling under Irvine’s Arch de Triomphe and through its Place de la Concorde.

Even if they did end up calling them “urban design framework elements.”

Dianne Klein’s column appears on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.