Much Desired Food, Beverage and Retail Planned for Great Park
Irvine to Consider Ambitious Plans for Food and Beverage at Great Park
The Great Park Board returns this Tuesday with a big item pertaining to Great Park food and beverage services. City staff proposes to:
- Develop an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Frontier Real Estate Investments, LLC (aka Almquist), relating to Great Park food and beverage planning, consulting, and management.
- Negotiate with Heritage Fields El Toro, LLC (FivePoint) for a potential land exchange that could facilitate the proposed food and beverage project
Highlights from the staff report include:
- Planned retail/grocery center located at the intersection of Bosque and Great Park Boulevard, immediately adjacent to Great Park
- Renovation of Hangar 244 into a food hall
- Construction of a restaurant next to the central lake
- Eventual expansion of a unified food and beverage strategy across the Great Park as it builds out
- A land exchange between the City and FivePoint that would provide Irvine with ownership of Hangar 10 and the existing Pop-Up Village. In exchange, FivePoint would receive a site of equivalent size at the northeast corner of Great Park Boulevard and Ridge Valley to be used for affordable housing.
Irvine received five responses via the request for quote (RFQ) process. City staff chose Almquist as the top-rated developer out of the five. Currently, Almquist is developing the San Juan Capistrano-based River Street Marketplace located within walking distance to the Spanish Mission and has already completed other downtown San Juan modern food and beverage venues.
The Staff Report describes the project, shown above, as connecting the park with the retail center via a linear walkway running between City-owned Hangar 244 and FivePoint-owned Hangar 10 with a grocery retail center to the northeast. The hangar buildings would be retrofitted into a public market hall and experiential retail space (similar to the River Street Marketplace in San Juan). The path between the hangars (north of the soccer stadium) would be lined by a series of restaurants and retail spaces. The site plan would incorporate FivePoint’s unused Pop-Up Village into the design. Almquist proposes to operate the food, beverage, and retail spaces located on City-owned property in tandem with the grocery-anchored retail center on Five Point property.
Staff report writes that “this combination creates a seamless visitor experience with the potential for the combined destination to outperform the sum of what the two centers could offer independently. This combined concept also offers great connectivity to the neighborhoods by way of the Bosque bridge which will span Great Park Boulevard and drop right into the center.”
Additionally, this project creates a new point of entry into the Great Park with the potential to improve parking and access for the tennis and championship soccer facilities. Specifically, Bosque trail will be extended West to include a bridge over Great Park Blvd dropping directly into the planned grocery center to allow for greater walkability for Great Park residents or anyone hiking or biking the trail.
Above, see where the planned retail/food project fits within the overall Great Park framework (including the public market/restaurant renovations for Hangar 244 and 44 located within the circle).
Almquist provided art rendered concepts paying homage to the El Toro Marine Corp Air Station that Great Park now sits on.
Shown above, the architectural design art renderings created by Almquist feature many large open California-room style spaces integrated with picnic outdoor spaces.
Outdoor dining groves with many trees, tables, and benches are proposed along the walkway connecting the hangars and other food/retail venues.
As described above, to create a large linear shopping and food center at the proposed location, Irvine and FivePoint will be swapping land of equal size. Almquist and FivePoint are proposing to relocate the originally planned retail center (corner of Ridge Valley and Great Park Blvd) to the intersection of Bosque and Great Park Boulevard, immediately adjacent to Great Park. This creates the opportunity for a single, larger destination linking the grocery-anchored center on FivePoint property with the more experiential F&B on Great Park property.
This concept would require a land exchange between the City and FivePoint that would provide Irvine with ownership of Hangar 10 and the existing Pop-Up Village. In exchange, FivePoint would receive a site of equivalent size at the northeast corner of Great Park Boulevard and Ridge Valley to be used for much-needed affordable housing.
Shown above is the proposed location for FivePoints affordable housing. The proposed land surrounds a closed-off electrical infrastructure area.
If the Great Park Board votes in favor of this item, staff will be authorized to develop an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with Almquist to be brought to the Great Park Board and, eventually, for City Council approval. Staff would also be authorized to negotiate the land swap deal with FivePoint to facilitate the food and beverage project and planned future affordable housing.
The Great Park Board meeting begins at 2 pm on Tuesday, August 8. The public may provide an e-comment on the agenda item here (at the bottom of the page), and/or provide public comment at City Hall in person, or provide public comment via Zoom.
