Anaheim’s Next Garden Spot

It’s called Downtown Disney.

But that doesn’t begin to describe the new dining, shopping and entertainment center at the Disneyland Resort.

“I’ve always thought of it as this really lush urban garden,” says Mike Berry, senior vice president of Downtown Disney, which opens Friday.

Encompassing a series of four districts, the 20-acre non-gated esplanade runs from the entrances to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure on the east to the Disneyland Hotel on the west, reached via a bridge over Disneyland Drive (formerly West Street).

The 300,000 square feet of restaurants, shops and entertainment venues are designed in a variety of architectural styles ranging from Art Deco to New Orleans French Quarter. Reflecting Downtown Disney’s emphasis on landscaping, the districts are thematically tied together with a vine motif in the “hard-scape”: a vine pattern running through the esplanade’s colored concrete, and leaf-shaped planters.

Among Downtown Disney’s high-profile tenants are Rainforest Cafe, AMC Downtown Disney 12 and ESPN Zone--a massive sports-entertainment complex that features a restaurant inspired by television sports show sets, monitors showing live sports telecasts from around the world and interactive and competitive games.

The House of Blues, Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen and Y Arriba Y Arriba serve up food and entertainment. And 20 specialty boutiques sell everything from designer sunglasses and candles to collector model airplanes and Hollywood memorabilia.

When designing the overall expansion of the Disneyland Resort, Berry said, it was apparent that in order to have “a world-class destination,” they needed to include the kinds of entertainment, dining and general amenities that weren’t available in the immediate vicinity.

That meant providing things to do not only for guests of the resort’s three hotels but also for visitors at the nearby Anaheim Convention Center and locals, for whom they want Downtown Disney to be a repeat destination.

Anaheim’s a long way from Paris. But when Berry and Walt Disney Imagineering executive Timur Galen were planning Downtown Disney, they visited the Champs Elysees in Paris, Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Plaza Mayor in Madrid and the piazzas of Italy. They asked: Why have these great public places continued to attract people over the centuries?

“It came down to there was something about the space that humans identified with,” said Berry. “What it is is great architecture, wonderful landscaping and waterscapes that soothe and calm you down.”

Downtown Disney aims to offer all three elements.

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In addition to the varied architectural styles, the curving esplanade features a variety of fountains and hundreds of types of plants, flowers and trees. The Catal Restaurant’s outdoor wine bar is surrounded by six 35-foot-high planters resembling champagne flutes, which are filled with raspberry-colored bougainvillea. And among the diverse trees are more than 40 35-foot-tall ficus trees that, Berry said, were saved from being destroyed in Culver City because of a sewer project.

With the exception of World of Disney, a 40,000-square-foot store boasting one of the world’s largest collections of exclusive Disney merchandise, Berry cast a wide net to find the right mix of shops for Downtown Disney.

“Because we were never going to be a mega-mall, we wanted these wonderful boutique tenants, so we went all over the U.S. to find them,” he said.

He found, for example, Something Silver, “a small jewel box of a store that sells nothing but silver,” in Seattle. He found Basin, an all-natural bath and body shop whose store fixtures are made of cedar, in Minneapolis. He found Hoypoloi, which sells everything from paintings to jewelry and specialty glass pieces, in Chicago. And in San Francisco, he found Compass Books, the oldest independent bookstore west of the Mississippi.

Berry also plied the country in his quest to find the right mix of restaurants.

“We’d really like the restaurants to work both as restaurants and as entertainment,” he said. “So Y Arriba Y Arriba, which is from the EstrellaMundo group out of Miami, is this wonderful tapas y teatro [food and theater] concept, a restaurant that also has a 12-piece house band and dancers.”

In New Orleans, Berry found Ralph Brennan of the Brennan family, “which is synonymous with great food in New Orleans.” Downtown Disney’s Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen, he said, “is this wonderful restaurant with authentic New Orleans-style food and great New Orleans jazz. And we have a House of Blues, which will be a wonderfully intimate place for great live music.”

And at Naples Ristorante e Pizzeria, “which serves these wonderful Neapolitan pizzas, there may be an opera singer in there,” he said.

Berry said there will be a different rhythm to Downtown Disney, depending on the time of day.

“By day, it’s this lush urban garden that only in California can you imagine it blooming all year long. And at night, it turns into this electric garden. What it’s doing by day is it’s this kind of pastoral retreat. And at night, it’s electric and it’s energizing.”

Downtown Disney has two dedicated parking lots north and south of the esplanade. (The first three hours are free, and two additional hours are free with validation.) There’s also a multilane valet drop-off off Disneyland Drive. On busy nights, Berry said, they’ll have as many as 80 valets working.