The sports complex at Irvine’s Great Park is getting plaudits from members of the U.S. men’s national soccer team as they navigate the early stages of the World Cup.
The facilities the team is using as its training base for its three first-round matches are “amazing,” head coach Mauricio Pochettino told the press earlier this month. Besides a 5,000-seat stadium, the area has 24 nearby soccer fields and extensive amenities.
“We need to say thank you to the organization, our organization, the soccer organization … it’s more than we expect.”
The nation’s media is catching up with the Business Journal, which profiled the practice facilities in our May 18 issue.
A feature on ESPN’s website last week detailed the team’s three-year search for the best facilities in the U.S.; once the team learned they’d be playing their first three matches on the West Coast, including two in Los Angeles, a pair of locations in OC were eyed.
The Great Park holds “a very soccer-specific facility, which we were lacking at UC Irvine,” said U.S. manager of operations Sam Zapatka. Contractual issues between UCI and the World Cup organizing body, FIFA, also made the team’s choice easier.
The team is staying at the oceanside Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel; the “hotel is meant to be a pure sanctuary, a place to unwind from the pressures the World Cup can bring,” the ESPN story said.
LA wasn’t considered a base.
“We certainly didn’t want to be in Los Angeles,” Zapatka told ESPN. “The busyness, the traffic. We wanted to be somewhere a little bit removed.”
The Great Park’s giant orange balloon, emblazoned with the U.S. soccer team’s crest, has gotten plenty of TV exposure over the past few weeks, serving as the backdrop for several media outlets’ daily reporting on the team.
The balloon’s been grounded over that time, reportedly to keep other countries, and perhaps
Southampton FC, from spying on the U.S. team’s practices.
The Great Park’s extensive collection of sports fields brings in thousands of out-of-town families on weekends for club matches and tournaments. But permits and food vendors aside, they don’t bring in much revenue for the city.
Charging parking fees could change that and help shore up the city’s budget, officials say. Irvine is expecting to face a $6 million deficit this year.
“I pay $20 to $30 a day to go to lacrosse tournaments in San Diego County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Los Angeles County,” council member Mike Carroll said at a council meeting last month.
“There’s absolutely no reason why the Great Park should not be charging for parking,” Carroll said.
Steve Torelli, the director of the city-owned Great Park, estimated during a June 9 council meeting that charging nonresidents parking fees would generate $5 million annually.
Irvine’s 2024 decision to spend some $97 million on a new indoor badminton facility on Red Hill Ave., nearly 10 miles away from the Great Park, isn’t likely to help its budget matters.
The total price of the 110,000-square-foot project is going up. City filings this month indicate a plan to spend another $13.5 million on tenant improvements for the gymnasium.
