Recap: Great Park Board Meeting 12/10/19
The Orange County Great Park Board held a special meeting on Tuesday, December 10, 2019. Two projects were unanimously approved:
Pretend City Children’s Museum
The Board approved a three-year pre-development agreement with the Children’s Museum. Upon satisfactory completion of the pre-development agreement, the city will enter into a ground lease with Pretend City Children’s museum to be located on approximately 5+ acres in the Western Sector of the Great Park. Pretend City is responsible for all planning, construction, operations, maintenance and capital costs. Pretend City estimates the project will cost about $30 million and take 24 months to complete. The ground lease is for an annual rent of $1 for a maximum of 55 years.
Site map
Great Park Sports Park Maintenance Facility
The Board approved a letter of agreement with FivePoint for the design and construction of a 23,000 square foot maintenance facility to be located by the intersection of Marine Way and Skyhawk. The total project cost will not exceed $5,175,000. The cost will be shared by the city ($3,675,000 from an approved FY 2016-17 budget allocation) and FivePoint ($1,500,000). The facility will be built according to the city’s specifications and used by the city for maintenance support services for the OC Great Park Sports Park and other adjacent park amenities.
GP Maintenance
The next Great Park Board meeting is January 22, 2020, in the City Council Chambers.
5 Comments
Scott Hansen
December 16, 2019 at 10:14 amThank you, Jeanne. What do you think it means that Wild Rivers is on the map? Perhaps I missed public discussion about this?
Scott Hansen
December 16, 2019 at 10:34 amOh, I see from this Nov. 7 article Wild Rivers is in an approval process: https://bit.ly/35uchTV Perhaps what confused me is the article suggests Wild Rivers is part of the Cultural Terrace. If so, my vision of a Cultural Terrace was a bit different (although I feel Wild Rivers is wonderful, I hadn’t envisioned it as taking up CT land). Also, I would hope the 1200 parking spaces are in a multi-story parking structure, so as to minimize the amount of land used for parking.
Jeanne Baran
December 17, 2019 at 9:39 amBoth features (parking lot & water park) are identified under the Cultural Terrace. BTW- The city’s Transparency Portal includes information on the Great Park & the GP Board just started posting monthly development highlights. Building the Great Park is a work in progress with 29 GP capital improvement projects included in the 2019-21 budget. Below is a status update on the parking lot and water park (source: November 2019 – Great Park Development Report). I’d love to see more community members attend the GP Board meetings.
Wild Rivers Parking Lot: The project consists of design and preparation of plans for the construction of an approximately 14.7 acre parking lot (approximately 1,225 stalls) that includes precise grading, landscape planting and irrigation plans, lighting plans, striping plans, and utility plans. The parking lot is to provide parking for the future construction of Wild Rivers Water Park and the Cultural Terrace. Status: On hold for further Board direction in February 2020. Design Budget: $500,000
Wild Rivers Water Park: Wild Rivers and City staff are collaborating on the relocation of the development as a result of a delay in the property transfer from the Department of Navy. The Navy estimates at least 18-months to complete the transfer. Wild Rivers’ financing team is unable to finance the project until the City owns the property. The proposed facility will develop a 25.5 acre park with an approximate 15 acres of parking in the Great Park. The development has a projected $50 million budget funded privately. Status: Staff will return with a new location and a lease February 2020.
Scott Hansen
December 17, 2019 at 10:11 amThank you! About the parking lot – The master developer sold buildable land a few months ago at $5.3 million/acre (by my calculation). A 14.7 acre parking lot is worth 14.7 acres x $5.3 million/acre = $77 million in land alone. At that value, I feel it’s an inefficient use of the residents’ land assets. Instead, why not build a parking structure that takes up less of the (very) valuable land, rather than an open lot? Would open up acres of land for other Cultural Terrace uses.
Scott Hansen
December 17, 2019 at 5:45 pmFor some perspective on how vast 14.7 acres is for a parking lot, consider that Planning Commission approved a 20-story office building and a parking garage for 1,459 cars, all on 6.6 acres of land. https://www.irvinequickrecords.com/sirepub/cache/2/24pfqq1lw50bhzynpigouo3k/1514153012172019053859212.PDF
Comments are closed.