Orange County 1990 : Maturing Metropolis Looks Ahead : Outlook: Orange County is coming of age on the eve of the 1990s, but it faces new responsibilities.

Orange County stands on the brink of the 1990s like an adolescent coping with new-found size and muscle.

The county, more than ever, is bigger, brassier and bolder, the rich kid on the block. No longer content to be a bedroom community, it has become an economic force in national and foreign marketplaces, emerging as a leading center for high-technology and biomedical research and design.

But at home the county is betwixt and between. Sociologists, politicians and civic leaders say the ‘90s can be the decade when Orange County comes to terms with its phenomenal growth and strides toward its prime.

“Everything in the ‘90s relates to maturing,” Claudette Shaw, president of the Laguna Art Museum, said. “We’ve been a promising, unruly adolescent, but it’s time to grow up.”

However, traffic, homelessness, deteriorating roads and sewers, unaffordable housing, trash and polluted air loom as stumbling blocks for a county viewed by many as unwilling to grapple with the growing pains that are eroding the quality of life.

The urban tensions that plague older metropolises will manifest themselves here in the ‘90s as the county becomes more ethnically diverse, as the gap between rich and poor widens, the population gets grayer and the last vestiges of suburban life disappear, experts say. It is the price the county will pay for its transformation from a string of independent towns to an urban center of commerce, arts, finance, sports and cutting-edge research and scholarship.

“Orange County, once and for all, will finally become a great metropolis in its own right, not just a suburban extension of Los Angeles,” predicted UCLA professor Allen Scott, a noted economic geographer who studies Orange County trends and life styles. “It will be a dynamic place to live in the ‘90s.”

For the 2.6 million people who will live, work and play here by the turn of the century, it promises to be a decade of remarkable change--toll roads opening, the coming of professional basketball or hockey, an expanded arts scene, increased political clout, new communities, revitalized older cities and clusters of shiny new office towers. But there is a flip side to the future--waiting lists, unaffordable housing, government regulations, ethnic friction and traffic, traffic, traffic.

“It’s lucky that Orange Countians like to drive and love their automobiles, because they are going to spend a lot of time behind the wheel,” said Jeremy Anwyl, an Irvine-based automobile consultant. “Lots of people will probably spend as much time in their cars as they do at home.”

It’s a depressing scenario, one that has increasing numbers of Orange Countians daydreaming about less-congested ZIP codes. But Marty Elkins of Tustin isn’t ready to jump ship--not yet anyway.

“It’s a new decade. Let’s think positive,” said Elkins, a salesman. “Maybe things will turn around. They can’t get worse. Besides, I’m curious about how things are going to turn out.”

The prospects are enticing.

At long last, the $310-million expansion of John Wayne Airport will be finished with its gleaming new passenger terminal, parking towers and even a proposed monorail system to whisk business travelers to key employment centers. But even before officials snip the ribbons on the stunning additions, the facility will be outdated, unable to meet the county’s soaring demand for air travel. So the search will continue for a second regional airport, possibly in the canyons and hills behind coastal San Clemente.

Sports fans can anticipate a new arena to lure a professional basketball or hockey team, if Anaheim and Santa Ana--acting like feuding cousins--ever decide which of them will build it.

Art lovers will be able to wander the halls of the Newport Harbor Art Museum’s new $50-million home--a potential lightning rod for artisans who have long complained about the dismal gallery scene locally.

The county will be more powerful politically as it gains a probable sixth seat in Congress. A high-speed train, which some are nicknaming the “Gamblers’ Express,” might link Anaheim with Las Vegas. Hikers and mountain bikers will rejoice at the prospect of half a dozen new regional county parks spread across 19,000 acres of canyons, ridges and coastal wetlands.

But for each acre preserved, two will be plowed under.

Earthmovers and jackhammers will continue transforming South County ranchland into housing tracts. Three, possibly four new cities may spring up in Saddleback Valley and there is talk in the backcountry of forming a canyon community to protect Modjeska, Silverado and Trabuco canyons from overzealous developers.

Thousands of people will settle in whitewashed communities clustered along the Foothill Tollway, the county’s first toll road, which will link Tustin with Rancho Santa Margarita and its “downtown of the future.” Envisioned by planners as the main shopping district for residents in the county’s rapidly growing eastern and southern foothills, the Town Center will join specialty stores, offices, movie theaters, parks and a central library through a network of pedestrian walkways and bike paths.

“It will be the kind of place where you would want to spend a Saturday,” said Donald Moe, a Santa Margarita Co. executive.

But while change and growth may be most striking in the south, planners point with pride to rebuilding the downtowns--and images--of cities in older corners of the county in the ‘90s. Huntington Beach expects to blossom into a tourism and shopping mecca for the west county as it adds four major hotels to the city’s waterfront and a glitzy shopping pavilion at its rebuilt pier. Capitalizing on its freeway-close access, Brea is expected to be a magnet for relocating corporations and North County consumers flocking to rejuvenated retail districts on Brea Boulevard and Imperial Highway.

Anaheim is bullish on plans for $4-billion worth of high-rise office construction in the Platinum Triangle, a 200-acre swath of prime real estate at the confluence of the Orange, Garden Grove and Santa Ana freeways.

Technological advances will give thousands of county workers the freedom to boot up their workday from home or a neighborhood office rather than commuting bumper to bumper to corporate headquarters. Telecommuting--using personal computers, fax machines and telephones--will become an affordable option.

But the push-button advances of the ‘90s won’t improve everything.

Count on waiting in line for everything from traffic signals to housing.

Securing a slip for a 35-foot sailboat in Newport Harbor may take five years. There’s no wait yet for Angel baseball season tickets, but should pitcher Mark Langston, the team’s newly acquired $16-million man, help bring club owner Gene Autry a World Series, that could change. Several thousand people are reportedly waiting for word about the first offering--still two years away--of million-dollar homes and lots overlooking the Pacific in the ritzy Irvine Coast development south of Corona del Mar.

The wait will also be long for affordable housing. In the midst of one of the nation’s wealthiest counties, where the median income is $41,181--and climbing--affordable housing for the middle- and low-income population will have become just a pipe dream. Waiting up to three years for federally subsidized housing in one county program is common today.

“We have 8,000 people on our waiting list, and it’s growing,” said Sandra McClymonds, executive director of the Orange County Housing Authority. “And there is no reason to believe that the demand will lessen.”

Lines at soup kitchens and temporary shelters may also lengthen. The ranks of the county’s homeless, numbering between 5,000 and 10,000 today, could double by the end of the decade when a median-priced home is expected to top $500,000. Squeezed by some of the nation’s highest living costs, a growing class of disadvantaged--the “underemployed”--may swamp the already overwhelmed and underfunded public agencies to seek assistance.

“A husband and wife, both working 40 hours a week, earning slightly above minimum wage, with a family, can’t survive now in Orange County,” said Scott Mather, chairman of the Orange County Homeless Task Force. “How can we expect them to survive the ‘90s without some help?”

Part of the problem is the prevailing attitude in a county where spending and consuming is often pursued with Olympic-like fervor, experts say. More attention has been paid to accumulating wealth than sharing it, a mind-set private planning consultant Al Bell hopes will end in the ‘90s.

“It will be a decade when we invest more of our energy and time in people,” said Bell of the Planning Center, a Newport Beach-based firm. “This county must--and will--confront the whole array of social issues that attend an affluent community with immense depths of poverty. Contending with those issues can be as leading-edge as designing a new housing development or computer parts or roadway.

“That’s part of growing up. That’s part of our responsibility.”

Government will reach into the lives of Orange Countians in new ways. New air quality regulations may spell the end for drive-through windows at fast-food outlets as idling autos are targeted as major polluters.

By the year 2000, all cities in California must divert 50% of their garbage from existing landfills. That’s a tall order for a county which annually generates a hefty two tons of solid waste for every man, woman and child--by far the highest per-capita ratio of any county in the nation. Mandatory curbside recycling--currently a voluntary program in a half dozen cities--will be in place countywide by the late ‘90s.

“Hopefully, our live-it-up, throw-it-away life style will give way to a more frugal way of thinking,” said Frank Bowerman, director and chief engineer of the county’s waste management program. “We have got to turn the corner and confront this problem.”

But government so far has been stumped by the transportation crisis. Don’t look for any quick fixes.

Average freeway speeds during rush hour are expected to drop from 25 m.p.h. to 18 m.p.h. during the ‘90s. Even more disturbing is Caltrans’ prediction that stop-and-go conditions during peak commute periods will triple, lasting up to three hours.

Thus, traffic increasingly will dominate peoples’ lives. Congestion will factor into nearly every decision from where to live and work to where to shop and recreate. The automobile will remain king of the road, despite promising proposals to build light-rail transit or overhead monorails to transport commuters. The number of registered vehicles in the county by 1999 could jump by nearly half a million.

Opening a 7.3-mile portion of the Foothill Tollway in 1994 will deliver some relief. So will the completion near the end of the decade of the county’s second toll road, the 15-mile-long San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, stretching from Newport Beach to San Juan Capistrano.

Sections of the Santa Ana Freeway through Tustin, Santa Ana and Anaheim may also be widened during the ‘90s. But transportation planners say it won’t be nearly enough, and that worries Bob Winslow, a Fullerton resident who commutes 50 miles a day to Los Angeles.

“I like what Orange County is becoming culturally. I enjoy the recreation opportunities, having a football and baseball team close by and all the amenities of a big city,” he said. “But what scares me most is the threat to my access, the fear that I won’t be able to drive anywhere because of gridlock.”

Coping with congestion will remain a full-time preoccupation. Cellular phones in county cars and trucks will likely triple to 300,000 during the decade as more and more motorists conduct business behind the wheel to make up for lost office time. In addition, sales of high-quality, expensive car stereos are expected to be brisk as drivers seek to drown out traffic.

“Orange County is one of the most lucrative car stereo markets in the world,” smiled Jim Holland, a Huntington Beach stereo installer. “People spend $2,000 or $3,000 without batting an eye. They want to escape the traffic.”

No wonder. It is going to be more crowded--everywhere. Another 262,000 people are expected to settle here by 1999.

Many of the new arrivals will speak different languages or come from foreign lands. Minorities will make up 35% percent of the population by the turn of the century. One out of five county residents will be Latino.

“The ethnic mix of Orange County will only accelerate,” Cal State Fullerton sociologist Myron Orleans said. “The salad bowl of race and culture that we are becoming can be one of our strengths in the ‘90s. Minorities will bring a cultural diversity that has been lacking in this county for so long.”

But absorbing immigrants and minorities into mainstream Orange County won’t be easy.

Without extensive job and language training, steady, upwardly mobile employment may be out of reach for many. Highly skilled labor will be in demand in the ‘90s to fill the 250,000 new jobs in the county as the region remains a manufacturing center of computer chips, medical equipment and aerospace parts. Complicating the business equation is a predicted downturn in defense spending, which will force many Orange County companies to retool and prompt workers to learn trades or wind up unemployed.

But the challenges are not insurmountable, some argue.

“Educating the next generation is critical,” said Father Jaime Soto, vicar of the Latino community in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. “We are seeing in the disappearance of the blue-collar job market in Orange County. And unless the current generation of Latino children get educated, they will not find a niche in this county. We need to wake up to what is happening.”

The same may be said about county residents in general who complain in growing numbers about density, crime and pollution, but so far have not solved the problems.

Some, like Peter Morrison, a RAND Corp. demographer, are optimistic about the ‘90s in Orange County. Unlike their neighbors in Los Angeles, Morrison believes, Orange Countians will act before it is too late.

“Many of the people living in Orange County moved there because of the promise of a better life, and they are unlikely to let it go without a fight,” Morrison said. “I think the ‘90s is a crossroads decade for the county--a time when people will fight back and recapture what they’ve worked so hard to create.”

Agenda for the 1990s

Today:

Orange County is growing up, but is it mature enough to handle the responsibilities, problems

and power that come with

bigger size? A1

How will a more urbanized Orange County tackle transportation, family, medicine, crime and education? B1

Everything you need to know about the coming decade. An almanac. B2

* Monday: The local economy is expected to keep growing, although at a slower pace. D1

* Tuesday: With new professional teams and an arena on the way, it will be a bountiful era for sports fans. C1

* Wednesday: What the decade holds for the theater, art,

music, dance and other

entertainment. F1

* Thursday: A day in the high-tech dominated life of an upscale Orange County family 10 years from now. N1

Agenda for the 1990s

Today:

Orange County is growing up, but is it mature enough to handle the responsibilities, problems

and power that come with bigger

size? A1

How will a more urbanized Orange County tackle transportation, family, medicine, crime and education? B1

Everything you need to know about the coming decade. An almanac. B2

* Monday: The local economy is expected to keep growing, although at a slower pace. D1

* Tuesday: With new professional teams and an arena on the way, it will be a bountiful era for sports fans. C1

* Wednesday: What the decade holds for the theater, art, music, dance and other forms of expression and entertainment. F1

* Thursday: A day in the high-tech dominated life of an upscale Orange County family 10 years from now. N1

1990 Orange County A decade of growing up awaits Orange County in the 1990s. It will be more urban, ethnically diverse and crowded Population While the population of the county is predicted to near 2.6 million by the year 2000, the Latino and Asian communities are expected to continue to grow during the first half of the decade, chipping away at the predominance of the non-Latinos whites. 1970: 1.4 (in millions) 1980: 1.9 1990: 2.3 2000: 2.6 Ethic Breakdown 1980 Black: 1.3%, 24, 411 Asian/ Other: 5.7%, 111,261 Latino: 14.8%, 286,339 Non-Latino whites: 78.2%, 1, 510,698 Total: 1,932,709 1984 Black: 1.2%, 29,686 Asian/Other: 6.5%, 164,352 Latino: 22.1%, 552,056 Non-Latino whites: 70.2%, 1, 754,078 Total: 2,500,172 Top Issues As identified by an informal survey of community leaders. Transportation Affordable Housing Air Quality Health Care Public Education County Hot Spots Anaheim: Home of pro sports teams, tourism and convention trade and proposed terminus of high-speed train from Las Vegas. Santa Ana: County seat is also hub of the county’s burgeoning Latino population. Saddleback Valley: Fastest-developing county sector; where experts believe as many as three new incorporated cities will emerge in the 1990s. Irvine-Newport Beach-Costa Mesa: Shopping, business and cultural core of the county. Huntington Beach: With a redeveloped downtown and beachfront, this area is expected to become a magnet for tourism and shopping.