Hidden from view in the middle of the city’s Great Park is a massive public works project to develop almost 1,000 acres that will eventually include 22 acres for two lakes, a Veteran Memorial and museums.
Plans are in the works for a $200 million amphitheater, a $120 million library and a $45 million botanical garden, among other projects. A 90,000-square-foot retail center is scheduled to begin opening later this year.
This year, the city is implementing an unusual building technique that has never been tried on the West Coast: installing two tunnels underneath railroad tracks in record time.
“There’s a massive amount of earth-moving and building that’s going on behind the scenes,” Mike Carroll, an Irvine City councilmember and most recent chairman of the Great Park, told the Business Journal during a tour that showed dozens of heavy machineries at work.
Altogether, the city is spending an estimated $1.1 billion to build one of the nation’s largest city parks. When complete, the Great Park will cover 1,347 acres—surpassing New York City’s famed Central Park, at 883 acres. Its cultural legacy will likely take years to define before it can be compared to the iconic parks of the U.S., such as Central Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and San Diego’s Balboa Park.
“We have the land, the money and the leadership,” Carroll said. “It’s a little bit overwhelming in a good way. And at 1,347 acres, it’s literally going to be one of the largest metropolitan parks in the whole country, maybe the world.”
It’s another example of Orange County’s ongoing building boom that includes the $4 billion OCVibe in Anaheim, the $3 billion Related Bristol project in Santa Ana and the $610 million renovation of the Dana Point Harbor.
The boom is particularly acute in Irvine, where three major hospitals totaling almost $4 billion in construction have been built or are planned. More than 10,000 residential homes are being built on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro that in the 1990s was initially targeted to become an international airport.
“Not bad for something that was going to be another LAX,” Carroll quipped.
The Long Start
In 1999, the Marine base closed following a contentious county-wide vote against turning it into a major international airport. The federal government ceded its 4,700 acres to the city of Irvine, which reserved about 1,347 acres for the Great Park.
The Great Park has had many false starts in the 27 years since the military base closed, with plenty of promises made and missed.
A significant moment came when the City of Irvine struck a deal with Lennar Corp. and its spinoff, Irvine-based Five Point Holdings, reaching an agreement for development rights for residential homes and offices surrounding the park.
Founded by Emile Haddad in 2009, FivePoint has played a key role in the formation of the Great Park through a public-private partnership with the city in 2013, in which the large-scale developer committed about $250 million to build and maintain park infrastructure and sports amenities linked to its Great Park Neighborhoods project.
“I’m very proud to see it being built and I think a promise made to the residents of Irvine and Orange County in general is being fulfilled,” Haddad told the Business Journal.
“There’s a lot of history and a lot of leadership that got us here,” he added.
“When these things started and there were a lot of questions about whether the Great Park would become a reality—those are the people that finally got it going, and I’m glad to see that it’s finally becoming a reality,” Haddad said.
The developer currently has entitlements for 10,566 homes, which sit adjacent to the Great Park. Over 7,000 homes, and 9,000 home sites, have sold at the Irvine development since its opening in 2013.
The Great Park board on Jan. 13 elected city Councilmember William Go as its new chairman, replacing Carroll, who held the post for two years and is now vice chairman. Go told the Business Journal that as a resident of Irvine’s district 2 and a homeowner in the Great Park Neighborhoods, he has firsthand knowledge of the community’s expectations for the future of the project.
“It’s actually really exciting for me that I get to play directly into my neighborhood, and I get to enjoy the benefits once it’s completed,” he said.
Go added that he goes on a run around the park almost daily where he gets to see a lot of the construction unfold.
“Our biggest goal is to execute efficiently and quickly on all the approved projects so far.
We definitely want to make sure that we stay on track and stay on schedule, because that’s really important for the resident who’s been watching this move along,” he said.
World Cup?
During a recent tour provided by park officials to the Business Journal, there were plenty of bulldozers, graders and excavators flattening sites and digging large pits for the lakes.
The city’s website has several ongoing bids for the first phase, which will pen out to about $828.8 million in expenses until 2030. Another $246 million is budgeted for 2031-2036.
To date, about 500 acres, about a third of the park, have already been developed for sports facilities that include a 5,000-seat stadium that may host a national team’s practices during the upcoming World Cup.
The park is already home to the Great Park Balloon, a carousel, Palm Court Arts Complex, Hangar 244 and Great Park Ice & FivePoint Arena. Wild Rivers water park opened in 2022.
The Great Park Live amphitheater was the most recent project to come online at the park, debuting in 2024. It’s a temporary setup until a $200 million amphitheater is built.
The park already receives over six million visits a year and aims to triple this number at build out.
According to the board’s framework plan, the park has been designed in five sections.
• The Western Sector and its sports complex has almost 70 fields and courts dedicated to different sports.
• The southern tip of the park is known as the Cultural Terrace, which will be home to a collection of new museums and a renovated community events center.
• The 111-acre Northern Sector is where the base’s former control tower is located. The park board is planning to preserve the station and build a new central library at the historic site.
• A long-awaited shopping center called The Canopy, operated by developer Almquist, will open later this year adjacent to the Bosque Trail. This marks the Great Park’s first set of retail and dining options.
• Lastly, the Heart of the Park will be the future home of a permanent live music amphitheater and a 22-acre lake feature and promenade.
The city council approved the final development design of the framework projects last May.
There are projects and improvements planned until 2036 as the board aims to develop “every square inch” of the park.
What follows are details on the Great Park’s Framework Plan.
The Canopy at Bosque
One of the most anticipated pieces to open will be the shopping center operated by Almquist, called The Canopy.
The 12-acre project broke ground last April and is aiming to open in late 2026. The name is inspired by the Ficus trees originally planted on the land.
Spanning approximately 90,000 square feet, The Canopy will be a critical piece to the park’s infrastructure. It will house a mix of chef-driven restaurants and curated retail offerings, which Almquist developments are known for, as well as a specialty grocery option.
The anchor tenant will be T&T Supermarket, an Asian grocery chain from Canada that first entered the U.S. in 2023.
“It’s inspiring to see the construction progress, and we’re excited about the tenant mix that will be coming to the project,” CEO Dan Almquist said.
Chain restaurants are also part of the lineup with the first food tenant secured being In-N-Out Burger.
The city is also revitalizing a WWII military hangar into a commercial space within The Canopy, called Hangar 10, that will include additional retailers and restaurants.
“It’ll be a combination of neighborhood-serving retail and also park food and beverage, which has been sorely missed and lacking for many, many years,” said city Councilmember Mike Carroll. “That piece is finally going to fall into place at the park this year.”
Near the shopping center will be the Great Park’s primary entrance where a monument called The Arc will be constructed. There will also be a bridge over Great Park Boulevard.
Further up the Bosque trail and into the Great Park Neighborhoods will be a new one-acre playground surrounded by greenery.
“The proximity to all of the different amenities, the proximity to the housing and everything within the Great Park is what makes it special,” a city official said.
A Place for Culture
The next key sector, according to councilmember Mike Carroll, is the upcoming Cultural Terrace.
Located on the southern end of the Great Park, several parts of the Terrace should be activated this year.
The $63 million Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, which broke ground last fall, is aiming to open in early 2027. It will house all kinds of aircraft, including military planes that were previously stationed at the El Toro base.
“This moment honors Marine Corps aviation history and the incredible community that has made this possible,” Mike Aguilar, a retired Marine brigadier general and the museum’s CEO, said at the groundbreaking.
Two more organizations have plans to break ground on new facilities this year—Pretend City Children’s Museum and OC Music & Dance.
The arts nonprofit is currently based in Irvine at the corner of Fitch and MacArthur Boulevard and both OC Music & Dance and the Pacific Symphony will relocate headquarters to the park. The building, which will house a performing arts school and rehearsal spaces, is slated to open in late 2026 or early 2027.
Pretend City is also moving from their former location in Irvine to the Great Park “where it can best serve the community,” Carroll said. He noted that after receiving a final financial boost from the city of Irvine, Pretend City is looking to break ground in the next few months with an opening planned for 2027.
Two more museum spaces are up for grabs with the Great Park board in talks with the Laguna Art Museum and an organization pitching an Asian American Heritage museum. Both are in the “drawing board stage,” Carroll said.
The existing Hangar 369 events facility will be renovated and then run by the city of Irvine.
“Every great city has cultural institutions worthy of a great community. And this is all part of Irvine’s quest to become a premier community,” Carroll said.
History of the North
The Great Park will also preserve and incorporate its historical elements into the park’s infrastructure.
The former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro operated on the site from 1943 to 1999.
The board purchased the former air control tower from the FAA in 2025. The former El Toro facility still stands at about 18,000 square feet with a dusty but intact interior. The faded flying bull mascot painted on the building’s exterior was illustrated by Walt Disney.
While nothing has been finalized yet, the board is planning to renovate and refurbish the tower for future use.
“Imagine the control tower being restored to a historical site, a museum where you could climb up the tower and look out,” Irvine City Councilmember Mike Carroll said during a tour.
The board has also proposed a new central library. It will have a much larger footprint than a branch library with room for event spaces and storage for archives and historical materials.
“The goal is to have a much-needed community asset up this way,” Carroll said.
The city will commence the design process of the library this year, and the site will be graded as well.
A physical display of the base’s historical timeline will also be built, curated by Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and a consulting history professor at UCI.
The base’s Building #369 is being transformed into a state-of-the-art municipal events center, and a Veterans Memorial Park & Gardens is in planning stages as well. The completion of the northern parcel is most likely four or five years out, according to city officials.
Western Sector, Sports
The sports park is one result of the public-private partnership between Five Point Holdings and the City of Irvine. The developer has spent approximately $250 million to improve and operate 688 acres of the Great Park, which includes the improvement of the 175-acre sports complex that opened in 2017.
The Great Park Live amphitheater was a project that came together in about two months following the end of Live Nation Entertainment’s lease of the previous temporary venue from an affiliate of Irvine-based FivePoint in 2023.
It is the new home of the Pacific Symphony’s summer concert series and has hosted a variety of artists from local cover bands to Grammy-award winning artist Ludacris. It can accommodate a crowd of 5,000.
Though this sector is considered a completed part of the park, a new pickleball complex is in the works and will include 20 professionally surfaced courts and a championship stadium court.
Irvine’s Central Park
The Heart of the Park will be the centerpiece of the site’s Phase 1 openings, according to the board.
It is where the permanent 10,000-seat outdoor amphitheater will be built. On a tour of the grounds, city officials pointed to the theater’s plot of land centered by a berm, or hill. The theater is in the final design phase.
One standout will be the lakes that are currently in the works. The North and South lakes will span 22 acres and live at the center of the park with islands, pathways, boardwalks and bridges all around the water. A restaurant over-the-water is even in the works.
Demolition of existing structures and site grading began in 2024.
Nearby will be the Great Meadow outdoor area and other amenities such as a ceremonial terrace and picnic groves. Another development the board has planned is the Full Circle Farm, which will be designed to house more than 200 commercial varieties of plants for events and potentially farm-to-table dining.
The Great Push: Prefab Tunnels Placed Under Tracks
The Great Park has a big problem with a major road—traffic on Marine Way is hampered by railroad tracks that cross the southern part of the park.
Building a tunnel under the railroad tracks could take months, if not years. Instead, the Great Park is undertaking a unique method that may be the first of its kind on the West Coast.
Ames Construction is building two prefabricated tunnels that will be placed at the side of the railroad tracks. The railroad companies will then shut operations for 53 hours while the tunnels are literally pushed under the tracks.
The first closure, scheduled for May or June, is Borrego Chanel, a 128-foot-long by 28-foot-wide passage for animals and a water channel. The second closure, scheduled for September, will connect Marine Way to the nearby Irvine Metrolink Station. It will be 100 feet long by 111 feet wide and 16 feet, 8 inches high, enough for two lanes of traffic each way as well as pedestrian paths.
The two undercrossings will cost an estimated $37.3 million. The tunnels are expected to be completed by April 2027.
The tunnels also involve SoCalGas installing a 30-inch gas line, Verizon relocating a fiber optic cable and Kinder Morgan relocating a 16-inch oil line.
Mike Carroll, an Irvine City councilmember and who is also a corporate attorney, and Irvine City Manager Sean Crumby, an engineer by training, are so excited about the project that they plan to camp out in tents or RVs one night to watch the event.
“We’re utilizing an innovative method that hasn’t been widely adopted,” Crumby told the Business Journal. “I’ll camp out there for a night to see it personally.”
A $1.1B Expenditure
The Great Park will cost an estimated $1.1 billion when completed.
About 90% of the revenue is coming from Mello-Roos taxes levied on the more than 10,000 homes being built in the Great Park. Other funding sources include cash on hand from the city’s operating fund surplus and Department of Finance settlement funds dating to when Jerry Brown, as governor, eliminated redevelopment agencies.
Approximately $150 million has been spent to date and the project’s second phase will be funded by bond revenue from 2031 through 2036.
All the projects are being built by private companies.
Dozens of contractors are using the city’s website to find details about each project and then make bids. The winning bids are usually the lowest prices with contingencies built in for cost overruns.
According to the city’s plans, here are the biggest planned projects from 2024 to 2036:
• Lakes and operating systems, $85 million
• Amphitheater, $200 million
• Loop road: $57 million
• Landscape projects, more than $285 million, including $45 million for a botanical
garden
• Parking lots, $38 million
• Demolition and grading services, $71.5 million
• Pickleball center, $25 million
• Veterans Memorial, $35 million
• Architectural and engineering services, $30 million
• Utility connection fees, $60 million
