Irvine Report
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Lily Yu Properties Irvine Lily Yu Properties 4010 Barranca Parkway, Suite 100 Irvine, CA 92604 T 949.322.9688 F 949.509.6199 [email protected] www.lilyyuproperties.com The Community Irvine Corporation The Irvine Company, is a 140-year-old, privately held real estate investment company best known for the balanced, sustainable communities it has planned and developed on The Irvine Ranch® in Orange County, California. The company also is known for its portfolio of high-quality, high-profile investment properties – which include major office buildings, hotels, apartment communities, marinas and retail centers – in San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties and Silicon Valley. Guided by a comprehensive master plan it undertook in the early 1960s, the company continues to create communities that provide a full range of housing, thriving job cen- ters, excellent schools, rich recreational opportunities and abundant parks, greenbelts and open spaces. Today, The Irvine Ranch is considered one of the largest and most successful master-planned urban environments in the United States. Approximately 260,000 people live on The Irvine Ranch. About 237,000 people work here. The Ranch Established in 1864, the original Irvine Ranch comprised 120,000 acres reaching 22 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean at Newport Beach to the edge of the Cleveland Na- tional Forest. Encompassing more than 185 square miles, the ranch represented nearly one-fourth of Orange County's total land area. Today, at about 93,000 acres, the ranch represents nearly one-fifth of the county’s total land area and contains portions of six Irvine 2 cities, including the entire City of Irvine. The Irvine Ranch also includes portions of the cities of Newport Beach, Tustin, Orange, Laguna Beach and Anaheim, plus unincorpo- rated land in the County of Orange. The City of Irvine is the geographical and historical heart of The Irvine Ranch. Irvine has a population of approximately 202,000. The city’s most prominent business center is Irvine Spectrum®, one of the country's major business, research and technology cen- ters. The Greater Irvine Spectrum Area employs approximately 65,000 people at ap- proximately 3,400 companies. Core growth industries are automotive design; biotech; broadband; computers and computer peripherals; computer software, and medical de- vices. Irvine also is home to the University of California, Irvine, one of the country’s best public research universities, built on land donated by The Irvine Company to the Uni- versity of California. Scope of Operations At the core of The Irvine Company’s operations is the creation of balanced, sustainable communities. The company plans and designs the communities, then sells land to builders who construct residential villages according to The Irvine Company's award- Irvine 3 winning architectural design standards. To help provide economic viability for these communities, as well as a well-rounded complement of services and amenities for the people who live in them, the company also designs, builds and manages employment centers and retail/entertainment centers within them. Development in all of the com- pany’s communities is balanced with significant permanent open space, community parks and neighborhood greenbelts. Large environmentally sensitive habitats are pre- served in their natural state. Most of The Irvine Company’s land and property holdings are in Orange County, but the company also owns property in Los Angeles, San Diego and Silicon Valley. This portfolio includes approximately 400 office buildings; approximately 40 retail centers; approximately 90 apartment communities; two hotels, five marinas and three golf clubs. History In 1864, James Irvine and two partners purchased the large ranch, which had been as- sembled through Mexican and Spanish land grants. In 1876, Irvine bought out his part- ners. In 1894, Irvine’s son, James Irvine II, incorporated the land holdings as The Irvine Company. For decades, the ranch was used for agriculture and grazing. But as urbani- zation continued to move south from Los Angeles County during the early 1960s, the company's directors announced plans to undertake a comprehensive planning effort that would guide the ranch’s future development. Through the years, the company's land holdings have diminished as homes have been sold and as land deemed sensitive for environmental or public recreational uses has been conveyed to governmental agencies to ensure preservation and public access. Today, approximately 44,000 acres remain under the company's stewardship. Conservation For more than a century, The Irvine Company and its affiliate have made the conserva- tion of its land—for both recreational purposes and the protection of ecologically sensi- tive habitats—a cornerstone of long-term planning on The Irvine Ranch. It began in 1897 with a gift of land to the County of Orange that became Irvine Regional Park. Since then, The Irvine Company has worked with municipalities, conservationists and resource agencies to permanently protect more than 50,000 acres of land on The Irvine Ranch through donations, land sales, development agreements and ballot measures. The result is a majestic network of public and private land that is protected forever as wilderness, greenbelts, parks and recreation areas. To ensure that there are sufficient financial resources available for the long-term man- agement, preservation and restoration of the natural resources on The Irvine Ranch, and to facilitate accelerated public access to the lands, Irvine Company Chairman Irvine 4 Donald Bren has made a $50 million commitment for land stewardship and open space conservation efforts in tandem with increased public access to the land. The City of Irvine The City of Irvine was incorporated on December 28, 1971, under the general laws of the State of California. We operate under a charter law form of government which was adopted in 1975, meaning we have a City Council-City Manager form of government. The City Council consists of a Mayor and four City Council members. The Mayor serves a two year term and Council members serve 4 year terms. The city has a two term limit for elected officials. Elections are held every two years, on even-numbered years. During each election, two Council members and the Mayor's seat is up for con- sideration. The City Council appoints volunteers that serve on various advisory boards, commissions and committees. The City Manager is appointed by the City Council to function as the chief administra- tor of the City. City Council sets the policy directions for the City, and the City Manager is charged with implementing those directions. Additionally, the City Manager keeps the Council informed of City operations, prepares the annual budget, oversees special programs, and coordinates the various department activities. Irvine 5 Irvine is one of the nation's largest planned urban communities and encompasses 69.7 square miles. We contract for fire and medical services with the County of Orange, and have three independent districts: library, educational and utility services. Other gov- ernment services include: animal control; building and safety regulation and inspection; general administrative services; planning and zoning; police; public facility/capital im- provement construction; recreation and cultural programs; refuse collection and recy- cling; street lighting; street maintenance; landscape maintenance and transportation management. Irvine has annexed in the past an undeveloped area to the north, and has also annexed the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, most of which is to be made into a park called the Orange County Great Park. Currently, Irvine is larger in land area than any other city in Orange County, because when Irvine annexed the southern and eastern unincorporated areas, it surpassed the size of Anaheim and became the county's larg- est city based on area. In June 2007, it was again named The Safest City in the United States (Irvine has held the title since 2005). A Planned City The layout of Irvine was designed by Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson, and is nominally divided into townships called villages. The townships are separated by six-lane streets. Each township includes a spectrum of similar types of dwellings, along with shopping, religious institutions and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships. Pereira originally envisioned an Atlantis-like circular plan with numerous man-made lakes and the university in the center. When the Irvine Company refused to relinquish valuable farmland in the flat central region of the ranch for this plan, the University site was moved to the base of the southern coastal hills. The design that ended up being used was based on the shape of a necklace (with the villages strung along two parallel main streets, which terminate at UCI, the "pendant"). Traces of the original circular de- sign are visible in the layout of the UCI campus and the two man-made lakes at the center of Woodbridge, one of the central villages. All streets have landscaping allowances. Rights-of-way for powerlines also serve as bicycle corridors, parks and greenbelts to tie together ecological preserves. The green- ery is irrigated with reclaimed water. The homeowners’ associations which govern some village neighborhoods exercise varying degrees of control on the appearances of homes. In more restrictive areas, houses' roofing, paint colors, and landscaping are regulated. A notable exception is the Village of Northwood, which was developed beginning in the early 1970s independent of the Irvine Company, and thus has the distinction of being a larger village that is not Irvine 6 under the purview of a homeowners' association. As a result, homeowners in North- wood do not pay a monthly village association fee; and its neighborhoods are generally not as uniform in appearance as those in other villages such as West Park and Wood- bridge, the latter which, however, generally offer more amenities such as members-only swimming pools, tennis courts, and parks.