A wave of optimism struck me as I ran alongside the San Diego Creek in Irvine.
That’s an odd time and place for a burst of warm feelings—running is a chore for me, complete with huffing and puffing.
The optimism broke through, no doubt helped by the route. The path beside the San Diego Creek is a low-profile gem, an interesting romp that’s hardly visible from street level.
I moved to Irvine from Los Angeles some time ago. I left behind a running path that had grown dear to me—a hilly dirt trail that wound through Elysian Park. I could walk to the path from my house in about five minutes—just the right warm-up before running.
The trail itself wound through wooded areas and low brush that made me feel as though I were on vacation, far from the city that buzzed just a mile or so away.
Unique
Some sections of the trail offered dramatic reminders of the unique respite Elysian Park offers. A turn on one switchback would give a glimpse of the downtown skyline. Another would look down at the Golden State (I-5) Freeway.
I arrived in Irvine convinced that I would never again have such a fine route to jog along.
Then I found the San Diego Creek path, which is about five minutes from my new home. It courses along the lip of the creek bed, which is home to various fish and birds, as well as four-legged creatures. The water flow waxes and wanes with the weather, changing the creek bed’s topography and the tactical approaches of the wildlife.
It’s like getting away on vacation from the busier-than-it-seems city just a mile or so away.
Glances upward, beyond the rim of the creek bed, yield occasional dramatic glimpses of the Irvine skyline. The Hyundai Capital building dispels notions that architecture equates to plain glass boxes here. The Park Place campus offers a clear reminder that off-beat style can work in an intensely planned commercial center.
Positive Signs
I realized on my recent run that—while I’ll never have another running trail exactly like the one in Elysian Park—there is another that’s awfully good.
I got to thinking of the Business Journal’s recent coverage. A $285 million hospital under construction in Fullerton … a machine maker that just paid $16 million for a plant in Brea, where it plans to hire 80 or so skilled workers … a veteran cabinet manufacturer who’s applying his hard-earned skills to a whole new way of building single-family homes … a $108.5 million deal for an office building near John Wayne Airport (see story, page 1).
We’ve also covered the ongoing struggles of some companies amid an economic recovery that got spotty this summer.
The sum total, however, points to a lot of forward movement. There are pots being stirred here and there in unique ways by interesting business people with strong track records.
There’s a whiff of momentum here—a fighting chance that a lot of business executives might look at their books and decide that 2011 hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been bad either.
Perhaps it’s an odd time and place to get this sense, but it could be that Orange County is on the verge of leading the region and state into a genuine recovery.
Economic outlooks are tentative by nature, and a recovery could take a number of shapes.
Here’s one certainty: The economy here—and statewide and nationally and globally—will never again be exactly how it was before the meltdown of 2008.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be plenty good once more.
