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Watson’s Recollections: Why Irvine Company Went to Newport Beach

Ray Watson’s passing has brought plenty of reflection on the influence he had on Orange County as the first urban planner for Irvine Company, where he eventually rose to vice chairman (see more on Watson’s career, page 4). Here’s a little-known insight on a key decision by the developer, gleaned from an interview Watson gave in 2003 for an oral history project a UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. Watson said Irvine Co. had settled on building a new headquarters at University Town Center, next to then 5-year-old UC Irvine, back in 1970. Watson the planner had argued for the location in part as a symbolic gesture for an area that still had plenty of growth ahead. The real estate folks wanted more pizazz, and had fought for a move to a couple of buildings just completed at Newport Center. Watson won the argument, and the board approved the UCI plan despite some reservations about setting up shop so close to UCI at a time when protests and other tumult were shaking college campuses. Irvine Co. hadn’t yet publicly announced the decision when a fire-bombing at a Bank of America branch near UCI changed its course. The case was never tied to the student unrest of the day, but it was enough to put the developer off the UCI location and on the way to Newport Center, according to Watson …

There was no shortage of celebrity sightings in OC last week, with Bill Clinton and AOL founder Steve Case among them. Both were at the invitation-only Goldman Sachs’ Builders & Innovators Summit, a multiday conference held last week at The Resort at Pelican Hill, where Case tweeted reports on Clinton’s remarks, including one that was well-aimed at OC as a home to vibrant clusters of the tech and medical device industries, which count many immigrants in their ranks. “Must give green card to entrepreneurs & engineers..they are job multipliers,” Clinton said, according to Case’s tweet …

Clinton later headlined a rally at UCI for democratic candidates for Congress …

Case also made stops at the Orange County Business Summit at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and the newly formed Startup Orange County, which aims to bring local execs together to “connect the dots of displaced resources for the next generation” of entrepreneurs here. “As a nation, we’re too reliant on places like Silicon Valley,” he told a crowd at Stradling Yocca’s Newport Center headquarters. Startup Orange County is one of 29 chapters of Startup America …

No shortage of opinions during a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing about Edison’s San Onofre plant just over the OC line to the south. Safety concerns have had the plant’s two reactors shut down since January, and some critics of nuclear power would like to see that made permanent. Another view comes from Bobby McDonald, executive director of the Orange County Black Chamber of Commerce, who didn’t get a chance to speak at the hearing but sent the Insider word that he and his group want to see San Onofre back up and running. “Speaking for the Orange County Black Chamber of Commerce, and as the government relations chair for the Orange County Presidents Council, a group of 27 ethnic and business chambers, I can say we support Edison because Edison supports small business, and that includes nuclear power,” McDonald wrote.

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