Send in the Food Festival, Marines Tell Organizers
The eighth annual Taste of Orange County boasts of being Southern California’s largest food and music festival, and given its new venue, the three-day affair also might lay claim to being the festival with the largest free parking lot.
Last year’s Taste--held in the Irvine Spectrum--drew as many as 30,000 party-goers daily during its three-day run in late June.
While plenty of food and music were available, parking was in short supply--and that was before the popular Irvine Entertainment Center, with its 21 movie screens and wealth of restaurants and retail shops, increased traffic flowing into the Irvine Spectrum.
With attendance increasing at a 25% clip from year to year, “we were running out of room, and the need to find a bigger, better and more expanded venue was crucial,” said Jim Wurster, president of JW Event Group Inc., which manages the annual event. “There aren’t very many places in Orange County with the kind of space that we need.”
Wurster considered the Orange County Fairgrounds, an easily accessible location with a hefty parking lot. But noise regulations evidently would have forced the festival to curtail its heavy entertainment schedule. Some local parks--such as Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley--are big enough to house the festival, but none has sufficient parking or easy access for thousands of hungry motorists.
Wurster solved the parking problem with a telephone call to officials at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, who’d been kind enough to suspend all but emergency operations whenever the Taste was in business at the nearby Irvine Spectrum.
The result: The upcoming Taste, which runs June 21-23, will be staged at the El Toro Marine base, which has acres of paved runways and aircraft taxi space to absorb the 10,000 to 15,000 cars that carry passengers into the festival. Access for motorists is relatively easy, and the base has had plenty of experience dealing with crowds during its annual air show.
No word yet on whether air traffic would be shut down for future Tastes should the air station that’s being closed as part of the “peace dividend” be converted into a commercial airport.
Admission to the Taste of Orange County festival is $8 for adults and $3 for children, and includes admission to all musical entertainment, magic shows and chefs’ demonstrations. More than 30 of the county’s best-known restaurants, including Ruby’s Diners, Taco Mesa, Tutto Mare and the Barn Restaurant & Saloon offer samples of their goods during the festival.
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Greg Johnson covers retail businesses and restaurants for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5950 and at greg.johnson@latimes.com