The Block at Orange Orange, California Project Type: Commercial/Industrial Case No: C030008 Year: 2000 SUMMARY An 812,000-square-foot retail/entertainment center located about 2.5 miles from Disneyland in Orange, California. Although the center, which has drawn more than 12 million visitors in its first year of operation, has a racetrack-shaped circulation pattern, its design is meant to resemble a city grid featuring two principal parallel "streets" connected by smaller streets. The project is anchored by a 30-theater AMC Cineplex at the center of the site. An ever-changing choreography of signs, lighting, and special effects helps to keep the project fresh and exciting. FEATURES Urban entertainment center Innovative signage Tourist attraction Urban design The Block at Orange Orange, California Project Type: Retail/Entertainment Volume 30 Number 08 April-June 2000 Case Number: C030008 PROJECT TYPE An 812,000-square-foot retail/entertainment center located about 2.5 miles from Disneyland in Orange, California. Although the center, which has drawn more than 12 million visitors in its first year of operation, has a racetrack-shaped circulation pattern, its design is meant to resemble a city grid featuring two principal parallel "streets" connected by smaller streets. The project is anchored by a 30-theater AMC Cineplex at the center of the site. An ever-changing choreography of signs, lighting, and special effects helps to keep the project fresh and exciting. SPECIAL FEATURES Urban entertainment center Innovative signage Tourist attraction Urban design DEVELOPMENT TEAM DEVELOPER The Mills Corporation 1300 Wilson Boulevard Suite 400 Arlington, Virginia 22309 703-526-5000 ARCHITECT D'AIQ 1310 Broadway Somerville, Massachusetts 02144 617-623-3000 DESIGN CONSULTANT Communication Arts 1112 Pearl Street Boulder, Colorado 80302 303-447-8202 SITE PLANNER Site Signatures 2120 Freeport Road New Kensington, Pennsylvania 15068 724-339-1899 LIGHTING CONSULTANT Frances Krahe & Associates Inc. 580 Broadway Suite 100 Laguna Beach, California 92651 949-376-0744 GENERAL DESCRIPTION The Block at Orange is the first example of a mixed-use entertainment center concept developed by the Mills Corporation, the developer of "Mills" brand shopping centers. Nearly three quarters of the Block's 800,000 square feet is devoted to entertainment and restaurant uses, although given the concept behind the project, it is sometimes difficult to draw a hard line between entertainment and nonentertainment uses. Located about 2.5 miles from Disneyland in Orange, California, the Block is an open-air center built on the site of a traditional enclosed mall that closed in 1994. Designed to look and feel more like city streets than a shopping center, the Block includes a 30-theater cineplex, several other entertainment and unique retail anchors, and an expansive restaurant row as well as a food court. Opened in November 1998, the Block had more than 12 million visitors in its first year of operation, encouraging the Mills Corporation to plan other venues around the country. SITE PLANNING AND DESIGN The Block at Orange occupies an enviable site. Located at the convergence of several freeways (the "Orange Crush"), the 82-acre site sits at the center of a trade area that includes 1.8 million people within ten miles. And, with Disneyland at its doorstep, the project is able to capitalize on the approximately 37 million tourists that visit Orange County each year. In addition, the Block has a built-in daytime market from the offices and businesses that have grown up around the site of the former mall. The Block's site planning is somewhat traditional—the mall is located at the center of a sea of surface parking bounded by a ring road. But the innovations are apparent, even as visitors approach the parking lot, which is dotted with huge, vertical signboards called "stylons" that also appear within the center itself. Designed by Communication Arts of Boulder, Colorado, the 22 stylons, some of which are 91 feet high, provide mammoth display areas to promote the center and its tenants, pay homage to city residents, or simply provide prime advertising space. The stylons, dramatically backlit at night, act as both a permanent landmark and symbol of the project and as temporary and changeable signage, designed to help keep the project fresh and new. "We wanted to make an impression on people as soon as they entered our parking lot," notes Jerry Engen, vice president and senior development director for the Mills Corporation. "The stylons signal that they're in a special place as soon as they get out of their cars," he says. Like an increasing number of new shopping centers, the Block, which consists of nine separate buildings, is open air. The circulation pattern is racetrack-shaped but resembles a city grid, with major and minor streets and plazas. The two principal "streets" are the Boulevard and the Strip. Each is approximately 1,200 feet long, but they were designed to different specifications to create a different ambience for each. At 50 feet wide, the Boulevard is the wider of the two streets. The intent of the project architects, D'Agostino, Izzo, Quirk, of Somerville, Massachusetts, was to create a more relaxed atmosphere there. The Boulevard has trees with spreading canopies, pedestrian-scaled old-fashioned lightposts, and benches. The Strip, in deliberate contrast, is more high energy. It is 30 feet in width, the trees and street lighting are taller and more vertical, and there are fewer seating areas. The inspiration for the Strip, according to the project's designers, was the high-intensity atmosphere of Tokyo. Several "cross-streets" link the Boulevard and the Strip. The AMC Theatres cineplex occupies center stage, both literally and metaphorically. The building terminates the Block's primary cross-axis, and its U-shape creates a large plaza and focal point for the project. "The theater is our town center," says Engen. Two restaurants—Café Tu Tu Tango and a Wolfgang Puck Grand Café—complete the "town square," while four other full-service restaurants continue along the main cross-axis to one of the center's six entrances and three valet stations. Most of the remaining anchor tenants are distributed around the periphery of the project, with the smaller shops grouped toward the interior. A second "cross-street" is lined with fast-food tenants, the Block's equivalent of the more traditional food court. There also are four outparcels associated with the Block, two sold prior to development and two sold as part of the development. The Block's exterior facades were designed to serve as a backdrop to a changing choreography of signs, lighting, and special effects. The buildings are conventionally framed, mostly one-level structures, with a stucco finish. The front facades of the various tenant spaces are pushed forward and back to help define the individual tenants and to reinforce the traditional street imagery. Similarly, rooflines are varied in height and profile, and tenant facades are painted in a variety of pastel shades. Steeply pitched metal awnings in bright colors further individualize tenant facades while maintaining a level of compatibility along the street. Recognizing that the longer-term success of an entertainment center is tied to its ability to stay fresh, the Mills Corporation has focused on signage, rather than architecture, to define the project. "Architecture gets dated and is expensive to change," notes Engen, "so we increased the signage." In addition to the stylons, the Block includes a variety of other lively—and most important, changeable—types of signs. Chief among these are billboards. Often disdained by cities as a necessary evil, billboards are used here to introduce a level of visual complexity and excitement typically zoned out of suburban areas. As with their urban counterparts, the Block's billboards seem to grow out of buildings and hang ominously overhead; they may seem to be unplanned, but they were deliberately and consciously designed. As required, the Mills Corporation submitted a comprehensive package to the city of Orange for review and approval. The proposed signage exceeded existing city sign code provisions, but ultimately, says Engen, the code was rewritten to accommodate the proposed signage. The billboards are revenue-generating elements, but content is restricted to advertising goods and services available at the Block. The stylons also are revenue generating features, but corporate policy restricts imagery to pictures, not text. Urban imagery also provided the inspiration for the Block's lighting. Designed by Frances Krahe & Associates of Laguna Beach, California, the Block's "street" lighting includes not only the old fashioned pedestrian-scaled pole lighting, but take-offs on more recent high-mast "cobra-head" lighting. In addition, vertical light bars, strung from rooftop to rooftop, were designed to create a special identity for the street leading up to the AMC cineplex. DEVELOPMENT PROCESS The original mall on the site of the Block was built in 1972. Called the City, the mall was originally constructed as an open-air shopping center anchored by JC Penney and the May Company. It was enclosed around 1980, but by 1994, suffering from competition from newer malls, the City closed. The Mills Corporation optioned the property in 1994. Initially, the Mills Corporation, planning a center not unlike the company's other malls—"City Mills" was the working name—hoped to reuse the original mall structures. But soon, according to Engen, it became apparent that neither the original buildings nor the Mills formula were right. With competition expected from other centers and even from its own Ontario Mills project, then under development, something else was needed. "We didn't want to confuse the market; we wanted to create a new brand," notes Engen. From the city's perspective, the mall was a 82-acre asset that had ceased to provide needed sales tax revenues, and the city was eager to see a successful new use of the site.