Remembering Square’s Roots

Poking through the exotic pottery, cuff links and other trinkets and treasures in downtown Orange one morning, Janice Rosella couldn’t decide which was better: A sunny day of post-holiday antiquing, or sopping up the turn-of-the-century ambience of the state’s largest historic district.

“I’d move to Orange,” said Rosella, on vacation from her wintry hometown of York, Pa. “I like the feel of it. It’s not like a strip mall. It’s perfect.”

Not quite, say city officials, who this summer will roll out the latest version of their plan to rehabilitate the city’s famous Plaza Square, a classic town center that has existed since the mid-1800s, much the same as it looks today.

For most of 1998, people upset over plans to uproot pine trees, rip out historical walkways and pump up sidewalk seating for alfresco coffee sippers and diners of up-and-coming eateries have worked to blunt plans for what they see as radical changes on city drawing boards.

But, unlike the battles pitting mansions against mesas and housing tracts against hillsides that have typified development in Orange County, this one centers on things like tall trees and fountain spouts. The old plaza touches nerves throughout the city.

“It’s the emotional and physical hub of our city,” said Teresa Smith, a city planning commissioner whose grandmother played Christmas carols on a piano in Plaza Park. “It’s where we began.”

Plaza Square was formed in 1871 by two lawyers, Andrew Glassell and Alfred Chapman, and included in the city’s incorporation in 1888. History added markers, monuments and gardens. A Hong Kong Orchid Tree planted in 1913 didn’t bloom until November 11, 1918, the day the armistice was signed to end World War I. Ever since, the tree bearing its lovely lavender blooms was known as the Armistice Tree, or Peace Tree.

Residents feared that the natural monument and many others would be felled in the rehabilitation project.

Protesting the renovation plans, the Old Towne Preservation Assn. in the summer filed suit, arguing the city had acted illegally in April and May when it declared the proposed project posed no significant environmental impact. The suit was later withdrawn in a settlement agreement.

But in the closing months of the year, lawn signs and fliers began popping up all over the town of 125,000. An army of 75 activists fanned out across the city. “Save the Downtown Plaza,” the signs cried. “Don’t demolish it--Polish it!”

People started wearing T-shirts bearing a painting of a pine tree and the words “I pine for you.”

City officials contended the grass-roots effort spread misinformation, an allegation the group, Pines/Plaza Preservation, disputes. Regardless, a movement had been born and, today, things in Orange are more conciliatory.

City Officials Hire Consultant

The plaza renovation project, once on a fast track, has slowed considerably, and city officials have begun listening to a Plaza Citizens Committee and hired a new historic preservation consultant to guide them, more sensitively, through any upcoming rehab.

“The City Council understands we need to be good stewards for preserving the historic plaza for generations to come,” Mayor Joanne Coontz said at a public meeting on the issue in December. “We need to keep it polished and that’s what this whole program was designed to do.”

Still, passionate fans are watching carefully, worried about the plaza, the heart of a mile-square historic district that includes the square, the Downtown Plaza Business District and 1,300 pre-1940 residential properties. They argue the area, which consists of the oval Plaza Park in the center, the two-lane traffic rotary around it and four corner quadrants adjacent to businesses that complete the square, needs only better maintenance and attention.

“We don’t want them to light this up like some mall,” said Gloria Boice, an Old Towne homeowner who, with her husband, Robert Boice, worked with Pines/Plaza Preservation to catapult the campaign onto front lawns and into display windows across the city.

Shopper Rosella and a friend, Criss Kiefer of Tustin, echoed that view, which merchants said is held by most who come through their doors.

“People want this feeling,” said Pat Kelly, owner of Happy Time Antiques & Collectibles Mall and the designer of the “I pine for you” shirt. “They all come here because they love this town--without any changes--just the way it is.”

Kelly engages customers in conversation, jotting down notes on where they come from and what they think. About 25% are from out-of-state, many of them from other countries. Almost all of them like the town just as it is, she said.

“People say that when you have something so wonderful, why change it?”

Then she answers her own question. “So they can make more room for restaurants.”

Supporters of a renovation make no secret of their interest in boosting the economic viability of the plaza, and one way of doing that is by making it more pedestrian-friendly and by accommodating those who want to eat and drink outside.

“The sidewalks are too narrow,” said Bill Cathcart, an architect who started his career in the plaza 30 years ago.

Cathcart said he watched as downtown Orange, like other business districts nationwide, suffered during the 1960s and 1970s from the dispersal of stores and people. The downtown J.C. Penney store closed. The Buster Brown shoe store left. The local hardware store was close behind.

“Downtown died,” Cathcart said. “It was a ghost town here. It was pretty much empty.”

The design firm he worked for in the 1970s moved into prime, street-level retail space, the desks of the firm’s workers alongside display windows. It showed, he said, a total evaporation of business interest in using the space for sales.

But as the city nurtured a budding downtown antique colony to vitality in the 1980s, the deserted district sprung back to life, enchanting a new generation of urban homesteaders and history buffs in a county by then overwhelmed by stark newness.

Businesses Followed as People Returned

And as the people returned, so did the interest of larger businesses. A cluster of coffee shops and cafes, including Starbucks, now ring the traffic rotary. Restaurants began pecking for space on the plaza quadrant sidewalks.

Renovation advocates said those trends need to be encouraged.

“We need to clean it up, open it up, make it safe at night, add lighting,” Cathcart said. “We need to expand it and make it much nicer.”

Preservation crusaders bristle at that kind of talk.

Boice, a founder of the local preservation association, points to the spurt of “Old Towne” mania and Main Street-style shopping strips sweeping retailing and marketing.

“Old sells. Old is desirable,” Boice said. “But we possess, right now, the ultimate ‘Main Street’ experience,” Boice said. “Any alteration to that experience is going to be detrimental. I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Boice, a lifelong Orange resident whose father was the mail carrier for the downtown business district, said he can’t fathom parting with anything historic.

“What makes Old Towne work in Orange is that what was here 50 and 60 years ago is still here,” he said. “The buildings, the houses, the churches, the Elks. It’s still pretty much the same feeling now as it was then.”

A tentative plan approved by the City Council last spring proposed a renovation that would remove 16 tall pine trees and replace them with palms; would remove brick sidewalk pavers installed in the 1970s and replace them with concrete; remove brick tree planters also installed in the 1970s; eliminate one lane of traffic in the rotary; alter the gardens and sidewalk pattern in the Plaza Park; and possibly extend the circular sidewalks out into the existing traffic lanes to accommodate dining space.

Technically, the pine trees are not part of the historic character of the square. But historic experts said the public’s “affinity” for the 27-year-old trees should be considered in deciding whether to remove them.

Meanwhile, considerably more power has been placed in the hands of the Plaza Citizens Committee, with the City Council agreeing in December to expand the committee’s voice and control of the overall project.

Cathcart said projected timetables show at least five to six months of work remaining before the project is considered by council members again, and every proposed change will be reconsidered.

But a team of historic experts hired by the Pines/Plaza Preservation studied the plaza and renovation alternatives, concluding in November that less is best.

“In our opinion, the Plaza Park needs maintenance, not renovation,” said the report by a team of architects based in Los Angeles, warning against jeopardizing the plaza’s National Historic Register designation. “With good, regular maintenance, the park could be opened up visually and retain its historic integrity and charm.”