The development team behind Irvine’s new $110 million Great Park Ice facility hope it attracts fresh hockey talent to the Anaheim Ducks, becomes a sought-after training center for U.S. Figure Skating competitors and, with the rest of the Orange County Great Park, enhances an amenity for local residents that boosts the city’s economy.
The facility also gave Henry Samueli—who with his wife, Susan, owns the Ducks—a reason to learn to skate.
At the groundbreaking for the 280,000-square-foot facility two years ago, Samueli—co-founder of chipmaking giant Broadcom—said Honda Center Chief Operating Officer Tim Ryan challenged him to be the first person to skate on the rink, so he started practicing a few times a month to make it happen.
The practice paid off. Samueli, who bought the Ducks in 2005 but made it more than a dozen years of ownership without lacing on any skating gear, took center ice last month at a grand-opening event without any trouble.
“It was really pretty special to put that blade down knowing I was the first one crossing that piece of ice and fulfilling that dream that started so many years ago,” Samueli said at the event, held by the facility’s nonprofit operator, Irvine Ice Foundation.
The arena officially opened in January.
It’s the most expensive sports facility to open in Orange County since 1993, when the Honda Center opened at a reported cost of $123 million.
Land Scarce
Great Park Ice also supports figure skating, curling, speed skating and sled hockey.
The massive layout is on 13.5 acres of city-owned land, and houses four separate rinks. Most prominent is the sheet of ice that’s part of a 2,500-seat arena named for its sponsor, Irvine-based developer FivePoint Communities Inc.
Another rink is part of a 20,000-square-foot practice facility for the Ducks hockey team, which includes a team store and pro shop, and a sports-themed restaurant.
Great Park Ice will also be the West Coast training home for U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body.
Mitch Moyer, senior director of athlete high performance at U.S. Figure Skating, called Great Park Ice the “Taj Mahal” of ice facilities, and said he hopes it will encourage more growth in ice sports in Southern California.
“With the cost of land in California, it’s hard to keep rinks open and a lot of them have shut down in the last 20 or 30 years,” Moyer said.
Great Park Ice was planned for a trio of surfaces, but deciding on four happened about a year before construction began, according to Art Trottier, vice president of The Rinks Ice Management Team, a Samueli-owned business unit that helps oversee operation of the hockey team’s facilities in Irvine and Anaheim.
Four sheets are generally needed to host large events such as national championships.
The first of those events was a national tournament for girls teams, sponsored by Newport Beach-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., held earlier this month, before crowds running in the thousands.
The facility will also be home to the Ducks development camp in June, a rookie showcase with six NHL teams in September, and the U.S. Figure Skating camp in August.
Trottier said FivePoint Arena could one day be home to a junior hockey team, as there is generally a 2,000 to 3,000 seat minimum to have a franchise.
Samueli said Great Park Ice is part of a multi-decade effort to make hockey a major sport in OC and Southern California.
“If you want to grow the sport you need to start with the kids. You don’t just magically turn an adult into a fan of hockey overnight,” he said.
“When kids get on the ice and see how much fun it is, when they grow up they are hockey fans,” Samueli said.
Sporting Center
Great Park Ice was built by San Francisco-based Swinerton Builders and financed by a partnership between a pair of Samueli-backed organizations, the Samueli Foundation and the Anaheim Ducks Foundation.
Irvine Ice Foundation owns the building, and has a 25-year lease with the City of Irvine for the underlying land, with an option for five five-year extensions, Trottier said.
Anaheim Ducks Chief Executive Michael Shulman said when they first approached Irvine city officials about the project there were questions about whether it would happen, noting prior delays at building-out other facilities at the city-owned Great Park.
The fears turned out to be unfounded; he said the result is an example to other communities of a successful public-private partnership.
Great Park Ice is part of the larger Orange County Great Park development plan approved by the City of Irvine in 2014 for a portion of the former El Toro Marine Corps base, after years of setbacks following the last recession.
As part of the agreement, FivePoint—which is overseeing development of nearly 10,000 homes at the Great Park Neighborhoods land that surrounds the city-owned OC Great Park—pledged close to $250 million to develop nearly 688 acres of land at the 1,300-acre Great Park into a mix of trails, nature areas, sports parks, and other amenities.
A baseball stadium and a 5,000-seat soccer stadium, along with dozens of volleyball courts, tennis courts and other playing fields have already opened since that deal was struck.
The ice facility is the most expensive individual sporting facility built to date at the Great Park and the first sporting facility there that FivePoint didn’t directly fund; its financial participation is in naming rights for the arena.
“Public-private partnerships set an example of how things are going to be done in the future. Neither the public nor private side can do it alone,” said FivePoint Chief Executive Emile Haddad.
During the Great Park Ice showcase last month, Haddad called the Great Park “a great economic engine” for the area.
“I’m already hearing from hotels how excited they are filling up space over the weekends. A lot of them do well during the week with conventions but over the weekend they’re vacant,” he said.
FivePoint plans to build hotels, stores and restaurants nearby on a portion of its Great Park Neighborhoods land.
Samueli said Great Park Ice will attract more people to Orange County, including professional hockey players.
“It will do a lot for the economy of OC as an attractor; people will want to move here,” said Samueli. “It’ll be an attraction for players to want to come and be an Anaheim Duck.”
At Great Park Ice, the team’s state-of-the-art training space includes weight rooms, a lounge with a full kitchen and a therapy suite complete with hot and cold pools.
Anaheim Investments
It’s a big upgrade from the 4,000-square-foot Anaheim Ice facility, formerly known as Disney Ice and owned by the Samuelis, where the Ducks have practiced in downtown Anaheim since 1995.
The team will continue to play their home games in the City of Anaheim-owned Honda Center, which opened in 1993. It’s the fourth-oldest arena used by a team in the National Hockey League.
The Samuelis acquired the venue management company that runs Honda Center around the time they bought the Ducks in 2005, for a reported $75 million.
The couple might soon become the most active developers in the city, after a string of real estate deals in the area surrounding the 17,000-seat Honda Center.
The Business Journal reported last month that Corona Del Mar-based H&S Ventures, an affiliate of the Samueli family, paid $24 million for an 18-acre stretch of undeveloped land just north of the Honda Center.
The site is the latest deal the family has been tied to in the area; the Broadcom co-founder and his family now own or control more than 75 acres near the Anaheim arena, to the immediate east of the Orange (57) Freeway, running north from Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center to Ball Road.
They’ve spent nearly $200 million to assemble those sites over the past year or two, property records show.
A mixed-use development featuring housing, entertainment and retail space is expected for the land, but full details haven’t been disclosed.
