IRVINE : Ex-Theme Park Site May Be Preserved

San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency directors voted unanimously Thursday to try to preserve any historically significant buildings of the former Buffalo Ranch, a defunct 1950s theme park.

The board, in approving a realignment of Ford Road to connect with the 15-mile toll road, said the agency should study the historical value of the former Irvine theme park and divert the new road around significant buildings. Current plans for the road would affect two of the buildings.

The corridor agency is planning to move Ford Road to reduce noise to Newport Beach residents once Ford is connected to the tollway, which is scheduled to be under construction later this year.

The Buffalo Ranch featured about 100 buffalo along with Wild West demonstrations and exhibits. But its significance did not end there.

Architect William L. Pereira, the designer of Los Angeles International Airport, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco and rocket facilities at Cape Canaveral, set up offices on the site in 1962. There, Pereira designed Newport Center, UC Irvine and buildings on the part of the Irvine Ranch that later became the city of Irvine.

Pereira brought most of the existing old farm buildings onto the land from other areas of the Irvine Ranch.

The ranch buildings, on leased Irvine Co. property at the corner of Ford Road and MacArthur Boulevard, are now owned by William W. Lange and are home to the Lange Financial Plaza. Lange maintains a corral at the site, home to four buffalo.

The Buffalo Ranch’s connection with the area’s past as a tourist attraction and then as Pereira’s offices makes the buildings worth saving on the site, said Irvine historian and author Judy Liebeck. Liebeck has been leading a local push to save the buildings and has collected 4,000 letters of support from Newport Beach and Irvine residents.

Not everyone thinks Buffalo Ranch is worth saving.

Ed Portmann, a past president of the Irvine Historical Society, said he thinks the Buffalo Ranch was a cheap roadside attraction.

“This is one chapter of Orange County tourism history that is best forgotten, not immortalized,” Portmann said.

Newport Beach City Councilman John C. Cox Jr., chairman of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, said the agency should give Buffalo Ranch “the benefit of the doubt” and study its historic significance.