By PAUL HUGHES
Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen literally is a hole-in-the-wall.
The restaurant in Old Towne Orange is sandwiched between antiques stores. From the outside, all you see is the line out the door. There’s no sign to tell you you’re there.
Owners Gabbi and Ed Patrick have yet to put up a sign. Their restaurant serving traditional Mexican fare is part of a wave of new eateries and shops that have cropped up in what arguably is Orange County’s original downtown, the circle in Old Towne Orange.
Catching Up
In some ways, the circle, also known as the plaza, is playing catch-up with urban hot spots in Fullerton, Santa Ana and Costa Mesa, which in recent years stole Old Towne’s thunder as hip places to eat, drink and shop.
For years, the circle, nicknamed for the traffic circle at Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street, has been more of a haven for stuffy antique shops than cool restaurants.
Gabbi’s is the youngest of half a dozen restaurants and upscale shops to open at the circle in the past year. More are likely to come with condominiums planned for the area.
“Absolutely” there could be more restaurants, Ed Patrick said. “Old Towne is 20% of where it could be.”
|
|
||
|
Mustard Cafe: “Each restaurant that opens, we get busier,” owner says |
Patrick said he likens the circle to small villages in central Mexico, each with its own zocalo, or center of town “where all the action is.”
But Old Towne could draw people from several counties, not just down the street, he said.
Most of the area’s new restaurateurs have personal or family experience in the food business. All seemed to have thought long and hard about what would work in downtown Orange.
Newcomers
In the past two years, 18 businesses have opened, including five restaurants, many in the past six months.
Priscilla Madrid opened Frogs Breath Cheese Store last November after counting passers-by in front of where she planned to put her gourmet wine, cheese and food store on north Glassell.
Her 2,500-square-foot boutique grocery replaced a paint store.
“Unique and hard-to-find gourmet food fits the mental picture of Old Towne,” Madrid said.
Parents of students at nearby Chapman University shop there, she said. Their kids know their way around a gourmet food store too, according to Madrid.
She said she’s asking city planners to allow wine tasting at the store.
(The shop’s name comes from the movie “A Nightmare Before Christmas.”)
Across the street, Cafe Lucca offers up “artisan gelato” at $3 to $5 and espresso in the mornings.
Mike Mares said he found the circle after a friend had asked if he’d been there recently. He visited and then decided to open family-owned Blue Frog Bakery Cafe.
“We started with just pastries,” Mares said.
Then people started asking for food, he said. Now a Sunday Brunch is on its way.
At more than a year old, Blue Frog is the grandfather of the circle’s new eateries. Mares said he’d like to see no more restaurants, but he’s in the minority.
“All these new restaurants,I can’t tell you how great it is,” said Tawna Khamo, co-owner of the Mustard Cafe franchise with husband Tony. “Each restaurant that opens, we get busier.”
The Mustard Cafe has been open for five months. The couple leased the space for 10 years. Their menu is big on breakfast and gourmet sandwiches. Khamo said she’s even developed a light dinner crowd.
“You can’t go wrong with the location,” she said. “We’re jam-packed.”
City’s Efforts
City officials couldn’t be more thrilled. They say the circle’s activity represents two decades of effort, with more to come.
In the 1970s, downtown Orange actually grew vacant,shops would leave and storefronts stayed empty.
Then came the antique shops, which could afford the lower lease rates the depressed area offered.
More recently, the city has upgraded and remodeled, helping to spur investment. The city even provided seed money for what now are some of the oldest restaurants.
“We’re maintaining history while offering opportunity for new business to grow,” Mayor Mark Murphy said. “The vibrancy adds to the charm.”
The city tries to “stay out of the way” while ensuring businesses meet Old Towne architecture and design guidelines, Murphy said.
New businesses bring people, and the people sometimes bring new businesses, Murphy said. As shops turn over, lease rates rise. The result in the past decade: gradual yet radical change.
The area still has its share of antique shops. Iconic landmark Watson’s Drug and Soda Fountain still is there, too.
But now you can get a beer at 11 p.m. or do yoga at Pa-Kua, a martial arts studio on west Chapman.
The circle is “the heart and soul of the city,” said Jim Reichert, Orange’s director of economic development. “It’s a vibrant place people want to come to. Who would have thought that 30 years ago?”
The city is aiming to have the area be an “18-hour” downtown. Officials want visitors to come anytime from, say, 6 a.m. to midnight, and find something to do.
“We already have a niche,” Reichert said. “We want an image.”
He compares Orange to other old towns, such as those in Fullerton or Pasadena,trendy, pedestrian friendly areas.
Old Towne does $10 million in sales per quarter, Reichert figures. Orange, like every other city, gets 1% of that. But it’s not about money, according to Reichert.
New restaurants expose people to other shops, boosting business for all, he said.
The challenge now is attracting more than restaurants.
Recently, Orange approved a small business assistance program to spur more redevelopment in West Orange, all along Tustin Avenue, and around the circle.
The program includes five loans, four of them interest-free, matching money for signs and landscaping and development fee incentives.
Condos
Meanwhile, Seal Beach’s Olson Co. is readying a condo project called Depot Walk, one of a handful it has near train stations around the county.
Olson plans to build 32 condos near the station in Orange, with three units combining business and living space suitable for accountants or lawyers.
Orange also recently won $400,000 in government grants to study redevelopment of the industrial area near the train station.
Carolyn Cavecche, Orange’s mayor pro-tem and vice chair of the Orange County Transportation Authority, suggested working with Chapman University, possibly on a parking structure.
“We need to incorporate the depot into Old Towne,” she said.
The area’s revival has been good for landlords. Reichert said he estimates restaurant rates at $3 to $3.50 per square foot. Store space is about a third to half lower.
Three years ago, the lower rates were all you’d get, period.
New businesses have taken lease rates “through the roof,” said Mike Alvarez, former mayor pro-tem and a principal in Alvarez Properties, which oversees some Old Towne buildings.
Alvarez and his family run the Army-Navy surplus store, and manage a space right where a Bagel Me! franchise is working through structural issues and trying to open by November.
Other Old Towne owners include: Dan Jensen, who grew up working in his dad’s Satellite Market, which now is gone; Al Ricci, a residential real estate agent whose signs dot area neighborhoods; architect Leason Pomeroy, Ricci’s partner on several deals; and even the Masons,the secret handshake blokes who own the spot housing Cafe Lucca.
There hasn’t been much opposition to the changes, according to Reichert. Preservation groups are involved but aren’t an official step in the redevelopment process.
Some merchants say “Leave Old Towne alone.” Others want to expand on what Orange has done.
The Planning Commission has seen no official opposition, said Denis Bilodeau, a commission member. Like others, he cites the “vibrancy” of a renewed downtown, and said more new shops and restaurants will come.
Some fear the area’s antique stores are on their way out. Others see room for them.
“The best of the antique stores will be there,” Alvarez said.
“We can’t lose (them),” Cavecche said. “It’s what makes downtown.”
For now, growth is limited by a problem that’s nice to have: The circle area is fully leased.
A tougher nut to crack is parking,there ain’t any. Lunch crowds already find this difficult. More cafes can’t come to town until their customers have a place to leave the car.
“It’s a problem of success,” Alvarez said. “Parking restricts growth.”
One possible fix is a structure in the southeast quadrant, behind the Army-Navy store and Gabbi’s.
“The concern about that space is visual impact,” Cavecche said. “You don’t want a parking structure looming as you enter Old Towne.”
Another option is the depot structure. But something’s gotta give.
“On a Tuesday night, leaving a council meeting at 9:30 p.m., there was nowhere to park in Old Towne,” Cavecche said. “It’s a great problem to have, but that’s how busy it is. We definitely need to address that.”
Selling Old Towne
Some merchants, including Mike Escobedo, want to get the word out about Old Towne.
The graphic designer with an office in Old Towne has launched Plaza Marketing Group and mails 20,000 copies bimonthly of the Old Towne Orange Plaza Review.
“There are 100 to 125 separate businesses and 30 property owners here, so coordinating efforts is a challenge,” he said. “But ideally that’s what needs to be done.”
Newer businesses may be interested in promoting themselves, Escobedo said. Many events, not the least of which the recent Orange International Street Fair,”an open house for an entire city” as it has been called,bring hundreds of thousands people, sometimes in one weekend.
If the city solves its problems, you could see more restaurants and other businesses to keep people downtown longer: a bookstore, art gallery, or perhaps a newsstand or grocery store.
Patrick of Gabbi’s said he’s had customers come from as far as Rancho Palos Verdes. Before he and his wife opened their restaurant, they hadn’t been downtown in a decade.
“It’s livelier now,” he said.
Hughes is a freelance writer who lives in Orange.
_________________________________________________________
New in Old Towne
Aldo’s Ristorante-Bar, Italian food, bar
All Flags & Sports, sports memorabilia, collectibles
Blue Frog Bakery Cafe, breakfast, lunch, pastries
Cafe Lucca, Italian food, espresso, “artisan gelato”
Charming Shoppe, collectibles, gifts
Copperwood Artware, contemporary art
The District Lounge, restaurant, bar
Frogs Breath Cheese Store, gourmet wines, cheese, hard-to-find items
Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen, Mexican food, bar
Julep’s, gift shop
Kaela’s Kasuals, women’s clothing and accessories
Mustard Cafe, third site of Irvine sandwich, bakery franchisor
Old Friends Antiques
Old Towne Kids, children’s clothes, accessories, toys
Old Towne Mercantile, home decor
Pa-Kua Knowledge, martial arts studio
The Running Lab, running shoes, clothes
Sideboard, upscale kitchenware
