An intricate downtown dance is playing out in Orange.
What the city calls its Plaza District—better known as the Orange circle for the traffic roundabout at Glassell Street and Chapman Avenue—is booming.
There are long lines at restaurants and crowds fill sidewalk cafes and streets around the plaza. Like Fullerton and Santa Ana, Orange has what a lot of cities here want: a teaming central hub that mixes old charm with hip, urban renewal.
There also are some growing pains.
The area’s seen some businesses close during the downturn. Some of the antique stores and eclectic shops the plaza is known for are going away or feeling threatened by a restaurant rush.
In the past few years, trendy independent restaurants have replaced stores. And chain operators such as Santa Ana’s Wahoo’s Fish Taco and Irvine-based based Ruby’s Diner Inc. are set to open restaurants at the plaza by spring.
Parking is a perennial problem for the area, which is set amid Victorian homes and nearby Chapman University.
But there’s more good than bad.
Sales tax revenue at the plaza is up, according to the city. In the first quarter, the most recent figures available, businesses there did $12 million in sales, up 30% from a year earlier. That brought in $120,000 for the city.
A “market forces” argument holds sway on how the area should develop.
For its part, the city is preparing a long-term fix to parking as a way of bringing in more businesses and people walking around the plaza.
Independent Streak
Nearly all concerned say they’ll continue doing things their way.
“You have to succeed in your way, not someone else’s,” said Wil Dee of Haven GastroPub on Glassell off the circle.
For Haven that means the occasional octopus dish, a burger with arugula and other experiments.
“Some people are happier at chain restaurants,” Executive Chef Greg Daniels said. “We try to do something different.”
Dee and Daniels each have a dozen years in the restaurant business. A third partner, Ace Patel, funded the venture.
Haven draws on Chapman University students, locals for lunch and even business travelers.
“We’re open until 2 a.m., and you can order food until 1,” Dee said.
Fourteen craft beers on tap and more by the bottle fill out the pub part of Haven GastroPub.
The restaurant is part of the new plaza and is a far cry from the area’s more sleepy days when few cafes existed alongside the slew of antique shops.
“I’ve never seen a community support a restaurant like they have ours,” Daniels said.
Bill King operates a different kind of eatery and follows the area’s “my way” ethos.
“You have to stay with your vision,” he said.
King opened the Old Towne Grinder & Ice Cream Parlor—known locally as the Grinder—in 2008, with $1 million of his own money.
He started a specialty chemical company for the food and beverage industry in 1972 and sold it in 1999.
“I’m a type-A personality,” said King, who holds several patents related to cleaning food and beverage equipment. “I’m used to having my hands in something.”
He wanted to open a sandwich shop, like the one he and his wife Joan had enjoyed in Riverside when they first married.
King added ice cream and carries 300 kinds of soda, including some 50 root beers—an idea son Michael, who runs the Grinder day-to-day, came up with.
He sees the sandwiches, sodas, and ice cream as family oriented.
Bar Backlash
That hints at another underlying friction for the plaza—like downtown Fullerton and Santa Ana, booze has become a big part of the plaza.
King said he wants “more dining and family entertainment and fewer bars.”
He envisions some kind of old-time trolley to transport visitors from outlying parking lots.
“The university is here, and this is where they start,” King said. “Every time a restaurant opens, we get more traffic.”
Signs of the plaza’s history remain, from the faded “Army Navy” painted on brickwork above the Army Navy store to the old Orange County Fruit Exchange, which still bears the moniker “Sunkist” above the entryway.
A banner hanging across one street reads, “Learn to Square Dance.”
Landlords
Brothers Dan and Paul Jensen own buildings on south Glassell.
The brothers’ family has been in the area for decades. Their father operated the old Satellite Market, which closed in 1995.
Now they lease space to restaurants and run two antique malls. The Jensens straddle the area’s old guard and new blood.
“You need a certain level of diversity to draw a variety of customers,” Dan Jensen said.
He said he remembers the “ghost town” of the 1970s and is glad to have more restaurants.
Two of his former tenants—Mustard Cafe and Aldo’s—closed. The two that replaced them—Kimmie’s Coffee Cup and Haven Gastropub—are packed.
It’s the fourth location for Fullerton-based Kimmie’s.
A patron waiting for a table one Saturday said he and his friends go to Kimmie’s after church every Sunday, too.
The restaurant is open for coffee, breakfast, boutique shoppers and ladies who lunch. It closes at 3 p.m.
A third Beach Pit restaurant opened last year. There now are five in Orange County, with another on the way.
“Our locations are in authentic, cool commercial areas,” said founder Tim DeCinces, a former baseball player and son of longtime California Angels baseball player Doug DeCinces. “Old Towne Orange is the best of that in Orange County.”
Beach Pit considered opening a location in Fullerton—another college town that’s Orange’s closest hip, downtown rival—but opted for the plaza area because of the lower rents and lighter competition that come from a broader mix of stores and restaurants.
Older buildings, including ones with antique stores, charge $1.50 to $2 per square foot a month in rent, according to Jensen.
“Some property owners are getting $3 a foot” for restaurants, he said.
Not everything works in the plaza.
Mustard Cafe closed in a dispute with its franchisor after just three years. Frog’s Breath Cheese Shop may have overestimated people’s willingness to buy gourmet pasta and kitchen utensils. Other shops and stores have closed and have yet to be replaced.
Some store owners fear the stream of restaurants may presage a coming flood that will drive out the shops they say bring people to the plaza in the first place.
“Restaurants and bars bring higher rent,” said Kristine Houston, who operates Elsewhere Vintage Clothing on west Chapman and a men’s vintage clothing store a few doors down. “But you can’t have just restaurants.”
Fullerton Lesson
Houston points to Fullerton, where restaurants outnumber boutiques.
“People go to Kimmie’s while they’re shopping,” Houston said. “Half the businesses in Fullerton are empty during the day. That should be a cautionary tale.”
As for the area’s parking woes, the city is working on a “pedestrian-friendly transition” between the nearby train depot and the plaza, Mayor Carolyn Cavecche said.
This includes wider sidewalks, benches, more trees—and, of course, more parking.
The first step is a roughly $2 million study funded by the Orange County Transportation Authority for two parking structures totaling 900 to 1,000 spaces, according to Barbara Messick, city economic development project manager.
The structures are estimated to take six years to develop.
The project’s estimated $52 million cost also includes retail and housing uses.
Next up: the design contract, conceptual designs and community input.
Cavecche called Orange “blessed” to have the plaza and a vibrant downtown core.
As long as regulations and zoning are adhered to, the city doesn’t step in, she said.
“It’s solely what businesses and property owners want,” Cavecche said.
