Stellar Designs Stump Panel for O.C. Great Park

Like someone enamored of three beguiling suitors, the Irvine park board couldn’t make up its mind Thursday when it came to picking a master designer for the Orange County Great Park.

“They’re all so beautiful, and we want to keep a relationship with all of them,” said a frustrated Steven Choi, an Irvine councilman and board member of the Orange County Great Park Corp.

But alas, he said, “we can’t marry all three.”

For four hours, board members debated, fretted and agonized over which finalist should design the huge urban park, Southern California’s largest after Griffith Park in Los Angeles. In the end, they put off a decision until next month.

Whoever wins the competition will transform 1,316 acres of the former El Toro Marine base. Officials say they expect to have at least $400 million for the park from developer fees and taxes from neighboring development. Plans call for a 2008 opening.

“This is the largest park in the nation to be built and totally financed with private funds,” said architect Jack Camp of Laguna Beach, who designed the nearby Irvine Spectrum shopping center and commercial center. “It has great potential.”

What emerged Thursday was a consensus that each of three finalists dazzled with at least one major strength. But no overall favorite emerged.

New York landscape architect Ken Smith scored highest in overall design, with a sculptured canyon and aircraft museum. EMBT Arquitectes of Barcelona, founded by the late Catalan architect Enric Miralles, was seen as most creative. And the team of Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey of Mill Valley in Northern California excelled through its ability to deliver complex projects.

The board agreed to meet again Jan. 23. Then it will hear from park CEO Wally Kreutzen on whether the firms would be willing to work together under a single master designer.

One option is to designate one firm as master designer and another as project manager, he said, with contracts that could run as high as $20 million each. The third firm could be invited to design a smaller part.

Architect Smith, who observed the deliberations from the audience, said each firm had already chosen its partners to create its designs. Mandating new members or concepts from the other teams could be awkward, he said, and would change the vision of the park.

“Collaborations generally work best when they’re mutual,” he said.

The park will form the centerpiece of a 3,700-acre development by Lennar Corp., which bought the base at auction this year from the U.S. Navy for $649 million. The sale followed a countywide vote in 2002 rejecting an international airport for the site.

The city-owned park will be ringed by 3,400 new homes and millions of square feet of office space. A thousand acres will be preserved as wildlife habitat.

The task is unique. There hasn’t been a fully designed urban park of similar size in the U.S. since the 1800s, when Frederick Law Olmsted created Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Boston’s Emerald Necklace. San Diego’s Balboa Park, at 1,400 acres, was dedicated in 1900 and took decades to build.

Board members agreed that their decision should be unanimous.

“You can have great implementation, but if you don’t like what you’re implementing, it won’t be a great park,” Santa Ana Mayor Miguel A. Pulido said, “and you’ll never know or understand what you left on the table.”