Irvine Reaches for Wrinkle Remover
For more than three decades, Irvine has been a model of planned growth, its fast-growing population drawn to the new homes, self-contained villages and attention to detail--not even the landscaping in street medians goes without painstaking attention.
And just as Irvine set the course for other new cities, it is now positioning itself to take on a new role: growing old gracefully.
“The city is at a crossroads,” Councilman Greg Smith said. “Some areas of the town are 30, 35 years old and may need more attention than the newer areas. We have a dichotomy of needs in that we have to provide services to both the old and the new sides of town.”
City officials say it’s time to shift the focus from growth to maintenance. As the city moves into middle age, they will begin debating in January the question of what steps to take.
“We don’t want the people from the newer part of the community to come to an area and say, ‘Oh, this is one of the older parts of the city,’ ” said John McAllister, deputy director of community services.
By Irvine standards, some city buildings are showing their age. All three pools at the Heritage Park Aquatics Complex, for example, are deteriorating and need to be replaced--a project that’s expected to cost about $9 million.
Landscaping in a few neighborhoods is as lackluster as some of the homes’ original earth-tone paint. Some retail districts look tired and worn. City leaders have been planning the repairs for more than a decade, when they began saving money to cover the cost of the inevitable advancing years--new paint, roofing, landscaping, ventilation systems, plumbing. Since then, the city has saved about $50 million in an endowment fund, and in the next 10 years, Irvine officials expect to double that amount.
Mayor Larry Agran said the $100 million will generate $6 million annually to fund repairs.
Irvine has been tapping interest from the fund since 1994 to resurface streets in its original villages, replace plants and trees along the thoroughfares, and ensure the community centers are kept in good repair.
“It’s one thing to build a modern, master-planned city,” Agran said “It’s another thing to maintain it and sustain the highest standards possible.”
In a town that once employed urban foresters, there now might be a need for more code enforcers.
“A big issue is the maintenance of homes,” said Sheri Vander Dussen, Irvine’s community development director. “Are people maintaining their yards? Are their garage doors working? Are their fences falling down?”
Initially, Vander Dussen said, the city figured that as development slowed, its building inspectors would shift into the role of code-enforcement officers. But the city now has a need for both. Development has continued to boom, and it could be years before it slows.
The Irvine Co. has two more developments planned in the city--one is a small housing and commercial village underway off the San Diego Freeway at the city’s southern boundary. The other, which is still in the planning stages, will be a larger village that spans from the freeway to the foothills between Jeffrey Road and Sand Canyon Avenue.
Maintaining Looks While Eyeing Growth
The city’s growth might not end there. There’s still a large undeveloped chunk of unincorporated land--about a third the size of the city--at Irvine’s northern limits, and the council is studying it for annexation.
The city planning staff also has suggested creating programs to help low-income families living in the older villages make improvements on their homes, Vander Dussen said. The city already has programs to help families buy homes in new developments.
Change is nothing new for Irvine. In nearly 35 years since the city’s first five villages sprang to life--even before cityhood--Irvine’s population has gone from just a few thousand people to about 150,000.
Lana Alber remembers what it was like in those early years.
She moved with her husband and three young daughters into a new Turtle Rock home in 1969. They were among the first families to take root. Their three girls even posed for a picture that hung in the tract’s sales office.
Irvine was a different place. There were acres of open space and not a single fast-food spot in town.
“Carl’s Jr.’s answer to us was that Irvine wasn’t large enough to warrant one,” Alber said. “So we would have to go into Costa Mesa if we wanted fast-food or go to a movie. There just wasn’t anything around.”
Now there are fast-food restaurants, cafes and other eateries in almost every city shopping center. The challenge is keeping them looking as fresh as they did the day they opened.
City officials say they’re determined to make it happen.
“We all know we’ve got a good thing going,” Agran said. “And we want to keep it going.”
