YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → The Most Impossible Rise of a City Ever: Irvine, California

The Most Impossible Rise of a City Ever: Irvine, California — Transcript

by Paul McAllister · 5,545 words · 891 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00In the winter of 1864, an Irish
0:02immigrant named James Irvine paid
0:05$18,000 for 49,000 acres of Southern
0:09California. That land, dry, covered in
0:12dying cattle, most of it cactus and wild
0:15grass, cost him roughly 37 cents an
0:18acre. Today, that same ground is
0:21controlled by a single man whose net
0:24worth exceeds $18 billion.
0:27Which means the value of what James
0:29Irvine bought has multiplied not by 10,
0:32not by a hundred, not by a thousand, but
0:36by something closer to 450,000.
0:40No stock, no bond, no barrel of oil, no
0:44ounce of gold has ever produced a return
0:46like that. And the strangest part isn't
0:49the number. It's that nobody, not
0:52Irvine, not his son, not his grandson,
0:55not anyone who ever held this land, ever
0:59intended to build a city on it. The city
1:02of Irvine, California, exists because of
1:05a drought, a death nobody believes was a
1:08suicide, a thousand acres sold for $1,
1:12and a man who once failed to qualify for
1:15the Olympic ski team.
1:17None of that sounds like it should
1:19produce the safest large city in
1:21America, but it did. Start with the
1:24drought because that's where everything
1:26starts. In 1862 and 1863, California was
1:30hit with a dry spell that killed an
1:32estimated 800,000 head of cattle across
1:35the southern half of the state. The old
1:37rancho families, the Sepovas, the
1:40Yorbas, the descendants of Spanish and
1:42Mexican land grants watched their herds
1:44collapse and their wealth evaporate.
1:47They needed cash. They needed it fast.
1:50And waiting in San Francisco was James
1:52Irvine, a man who had come to California
1:55in 1849 during the gold rush, worked the
1:58mines, worked a grocery business, and
2:01learned the first lesson of California
2:03wealth. You don't get rich pulling
2:05things out of the ground. You get rich
2:07owning the ground itself. Irvine and
2:10three partners, Benjamin and Thomas
2:12Flint and their cousin Llewellyn Bixby,
2:14moved quickly. They bought the Rancho
2:17Sanwaqin, nearly 49,000 acres from the
2:20desperate Andre Sapulva for $18,000.
2:25Two years later in 1866 they picked up
2:28the Rancho Lomas de Santiago another
2:3147,000 acres from the estate of William
2:34Wolfskill for $7,000.
2:37Then in 1868 a court judgment handed
2:41them 4,000 more acres of the Rancho
2:44Santiago de Santa Ana. In four years,
2:47for a total investment of roughly
2:49$40,000,
2:51these four men had assembled $108,000
2:55acres of contiguous Southern California
2:58land stretching from the Santa Ana
3:00Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It was
3:03nearly a third of what would eventually
3:05become Orange County.
3:08And here's the fact that explains
3:10everything that follows. It was all one
3:14piece. Not scattered parcels, not
3:17separate investments, one unbroken
3:20expanse of earth [music] held by one
3:23group, answerable to no one else. That
3:27single fact that the land stayed whole
3:30is the reason a city called Irvine
3:33exists today instead of another 20 m of
3:36freeway exits and strip malls. In 1876,
3:41Irvine bought out the Flints and Bixby,
3:43becoming the sole owner. He ran sheep
3:46mostly. It was a plain operation on
3:48extraordinary land. When he died in
3:511886, his son, James Irvine II,
3:54inherited the entire ranch at the age of
3:5719.
3:58There's a detail about James II that I
4:01love because it tells you something
4:02about the era and about the man. Shortly
4:05after learning he'd inherited a 100,000
4:08acres of Southern California, he and a
4:10friend climbed onto high-wheel bicycles
4:12in San Francisco and rode them all the
4:15way down to Orange County to inspect the
4:17property. That's roughly 450 m on a
4:21penny farthing. He arrived, looked at
4:24his inheritance, and then did something
4:26that would define the ranch for the next
4:2860 years. He diversified. [music]
4:31He planted. He turned the Irvine ranch
4:33from a sheep operation into one of the
4:36largest agricultural enterprises in
4:38California. Grains, vegetables, lima
4:41beans, citrus groves, walnuts, miles and
4:45miles of lima beans. Actually, row after
4:48row of them, flat and green across the
4:50coastal plane. So many acres of lima
4:53beans that the region became known as a
4:56national center for them. And in 1894,
4:59he incorporated the whole thing as the
5:02Irvine Company. Think about what James
5:05Irvine II did not do. He did not sell.
5:09As Los Angeles exploded northward and
5:12westward through the early 20th century,
5:14as Orange County started to fill in
5:16around the edges, as developers came
5:18calling with bigger and bigger offers,
5:20James II held. This is the defining act
5:24of the Irvine story. Not building, but
5:27waiting. While his neighbors sold off
5:30parcels to subdividers and watched their
5:32ranchos dissolve into tracked housing,
5:34James II poured money back into the
5:37land. He built a dam in 1929 and created
5:41Irvine Lake, anchoring a sophisticated
5:43irrigation system that turned formerly
5:46dry acreage into productive soil. He
5:49planted citrus orchards that produced
5:51revenue year after year. He donated 300
5:54acres for a public park in 1897, the
5:57first regional park in Orange County. A
6:00gift that signaled something unusual
6:02about the way this family thought about
6:04land. They weren't just sitting on it.
6:07They were investing in the idea that
6:09wholeness itself had value, that the
6:12ranch intact was worth more than the sum
6:15of its sold off parts. It was a
6:18contrarian bet, and for decades it
6:20looked like a foolish one. By the 1930s,
6:23the ranch was producing lima beans,
6:26Valencia oranges, avocados, walnuts,
6:29barley, and cattle. It employed hundreds
6:32of workers who lived in bunk houses and
6:34company housing along what was called
6:37Foreman's Row. There was a warehouse by
6:40the railroad tracks, a small post
6:42office, a scattering of structures that
6:44constituted the town of Irvine. not a
6:48city, barely a settlement, more like a
6:50company camp. In 1937, as if to ensure
6:55that his philosophy of holding would
6:57outlast him, James II created the James
7:01Irvine Foundation and transferred 51% of
7:05the company's stock into it. The
7:07foundation's charter directed that
7:09proceeds be devoted to charitable
7:11purposes in California. When James II
7:15died in 1947 at the age of 80, his
7:18bequest to the foundation was valued at
7:21$5.6 million.
7:24The ranch was intact. The land was whole
7:28and nobody was building houses on it.
7:31His son, Meifford Irvine, took over as
7:33president. And here is where the story
7:36cracks open. Myford was born in 1898. He
7:40married, divorced, remarried. He had a
7:42daughter. By most accounts, he was a
7:44quieter man than his father, less
7:46consumed by the ranch, but dutiful
7:48enough to run it. And then on January
7:5111th, 1959, Meifford Irvine was found
7:55dead in the basement of his ranch home.
7:57The coroner ruled it suicide. The
8:00details of that ruling remained, to put
8:02it carefully, contested. Myford had been
8:05shot three times. Twice in the abdomen
8:08with a 16 gauge shotgun. Once in the
8:11temple with a 22 caliber revolver. He
8:14was right-handed. The shots appeared to
8:16have been fired with his left hand. Two
8:18different weapons, three wounds, and the
8:21dominant hand unused. The coroner's
8:24verdict stands to this day, but members
8:26of the Irvine family have publicly
8:28doubted it for decades. No one has ever
8:32been charged with anything. The case has
8:34never been reopened. Whatever the truth,
8:37Mifford's death in January 1959 removed
8:40the last member of the Irvine bloodline
8:43who might have resisted what happened
8:44next. Because 9 months later, the
8:47University of California came looking
8:49for land. The timing is uncanny. In
8:531957, the UC regents had authorized the
8:56creation of a new campus in Southern
8:58California, and they'd hired an
9:00architect named William Pereira to scout
9:02locations. Pereira was not an ordinary
9:05architect. He'd helped design the 1933
9:08Chicago World's Fair. He'd built movie
9:10theaters and sanitariums and research
9:12labs. He'd designed the Los Angeles
9:15International Airport Terminal. He was
9:17by the late 50s one of the most
9:19respected architects and planners in
9:21America. a man who had grown
9:23increasingly disgusted by what post-war
9:26suburban development was doing to
9:27Southern California. The sprawl, the
9:30chop, the way good land was getting
9:32sliced into lots and drained of any
9:35coherence. He looked at more than 20
9:37possible sites for the new campus. He
9:40studied cities across southeast Los
9:42Angeles and Orange County. And then he
9:45stood on a hilltop on the Irvine Ranch.
9:48A hilltop surrounded by Limma bean
9:50fields as far as he could see in every
9:52direction. And he knew this was the
9:55site, not because it was the most
9:57accessible or the most developed,
9:59because it was the least, because it was
10:02empty, because it was owned by a single
10:05entity. Because a man could stand on
10:08that hilltop and imagine not just a
10:10university, but an entire city designed
10:13from scratch without having to buy out a
10:15hundred different owners or navigate a
10:18patchwork of competing zoning boards.
10:21Pereira later said the Irvine ranch
10:23reminded him of the great European
10:25university settings, the contemplative
10:28space, the sense of place, the room to
10:30grow. He told the Irvine Company
10:33trustees he needed at least a thousand
10:35acres for the campus. A trustee told him
10:38that would be impossible. But there was
10:41someone on the Irvine Company board who
10:43disagreed. Her name was Joan Irvine
10:45Smith and she was the great
10:47granddaughter of the original James
10:49Irvine. Joan was 26 years old. She was
10:52fierce and she understood something that
10:54the older board members did not. A
10:57university would do for southern Orange
10:59County what UCLA had done for West Los
11:01Angeles. It would anchor everything. It
11:04would create value that no number of
11:06lima bean harvests [music] could match.
11:09She lobbied. She argued. She built a
11:12coalition of local leaders. And in
11:14September of 1960, the Irvine Company
11:17transferred a thousand acres of its
11:19ranch to the University of California.
11:22The price was $1. There was a clause in
11:25the company charter that said real
11:27property could not be donated to a
11:29public entity. So the dollar was
11:31technically a sale, but everyone
11:34understood the truth. Joan Irvine Smith
11:37had just convinced [music] one of the
11:39largest private land holders in American
11:41history to give away a piece of itself.
11:45That dollar bought what would become UC
11:48Irvine. Four years later, the regents
11:51purchased an additional 500 adjacent
11:53acres. And by then, William Pereira was
11:56already doing something far more
11:58ambitious than designing a campus. He
12:01was designing a city. In 1960, the
12:04Irvine Company converted the old Irvine
12:07family mansion into offices and gave
12:09them to Pereira. He moved in and began
12:12working on a master plan, not just for
12:14the university, but for 10,000 acres
12:16surrounding it. The concept was radical
12:19for its time, though it would have been
12:21recognizable to Ebenezer Howard, the
12:23English planner whose garden city
12:25diagrams Pereira had studied closely.
12:28The university would sit at the center
12:30like a hub. Radiating outward would be
12:33residential villages, each with its own
12:36school, park, and shopping center
12:38connected by green belts and bicycle
12:40paths. Industrial and commercial zones
12:43would be placed deliberately buffered
12:45from homes positioned to generate tax
12:48revenue without intruding on daily life.
12:51Open space, real open space, not
12:54leftover scraps, would be protected
12:56permanently. The streets would have
12:58landscaping allowances built into their
13:00design. The power line corridors would
13:03double as bike paths and nature
13:05corridors. Even the irrigation would be
13:08planned. The city would use reclaimed
13:10water on its greenery. Pereira's campus
13:13design itself was a statement of intent.
13:15He modeled it on Ebenezer Howard's ring
13:18plan garden city, a circular central
13:20park ringed by six academic quadrangles
13:24connected to the center by radiating
13:26pedestrian malls. An inner ring half a
13:29mile in diameter linked undergraduate
13:31teaching buildings. An outer ring
13:33connected the specialized research
13:35facilities. He proposed a town center
13:38with civic buildings and housing for
13:4010,000 residents linked to the campus
13:43entrance by a pedestrian bridge. It was
13:45idealistic, geometric, and remarkably,
13:49it got built. Walk the UC Irvine campus
13:53today and you can still see the wheel
13:55and spoke layout, still feel the
13:57influence of a man who believed that the
13:59shape of a place could shape the lives
14:02within it. Pereira called it a city of
14:05tomorrow. And the thing that made it
14:07possible, the thing that distinguished
14:09this plan from every other utopian
14:11sketch gathering dust in an architecture
14:13school was that the Irvine Company owned
14:16all the land. There were no holdouts to
14:19buy out, no city councils to persuade,
14:22no neighborhood opposition to navigate.
14:24One company, one plan, one continuous
14:28piece of earth. The same characteristic
14:31that had made the ranch possible in
14:331864,
14:34its wholeness, its refusal to fragment,
14:37now made the city possible a century
14:40later. There is a footnote to this era
14:42that captures the scale of the
14:44emptiness. In 1953, 7 years before the
14:48university deal, the Irvine ranch had
14:51hosted the third national boy scout
14:53jamboree.
14:5550,000 scouts descended on the open
14:58land, camping on fields that would later
15:00become Fashion Island. A plaque still
15:03marks the spot. That's how empty this
15:05place was in the midentth century. Its
15:08best use to the outside world was as a
15:11campground. In 1964, the campus site was
15:15dedicated. President Lyndon Johnson flew
15:17in. Governor Pat Brown was there. Daniel
15:20Aldrich, the founding chancellor, broke
15:22ground. The following year, in the fall
15:25of 1965, UC Irvine opened its doors to
15:28its first class of students. And within
15:30a year, the first residential village,
15:33University Park, was welcoming its first
15:35families. The houses were modern,
15:38cleanlined, influenced by the post and
15:40bean California modernism of Ikler and
15:43the Sea Ranch. Interior atriums brought
15:46light into living rooms. Green belts led
15:48to schools and local shops. It was
15:51handsome, quiet, deliberate, and almost
15:54startlingly empty. The 1970 census
15:58counted about 34,000 people in the area.
16:01Around them, in every direction, the LMA
16:04bean fields still ran to the horizon.
16:08Then, one by one, the villages came.
16:11Turtle Rock wrapping around the hills
16:13near the university. West Park, Irvine's
16:16first Mediterranean style village,
16:18introducing coral colored homes and
16:20terracotta tiles and palm trees. El
16:23Camino Royale, Walnut, named for the
16:26groves that once made the area the
16:27walnut capital of the world. By 1970,
16:32five villages were complete. And on
16:34December 28th, 1971, the residents of
16:37those communities voted to incorporate
16:39as a city. The city of Irvine came into
16:43existence not because a settlement had
16:45gradually grown into a town that
16:47gradually grew into a city. It was
16:50incorporated because a plan said it was
16:53time. The city was founded on a
16:55blueprint. The second major phase was
16:58Woodbridge designed by landscape
17:00architect Peter Walker and the firm of
17:02Smith and Williams. It opened in 1975 on
17:061,800 acres of the ranch's broad valley
17:08floor, larger than any single previous
17:11village. Woodbridge took the planning
17:14concepts and expanded them. Two
17:16artificial lakes, each crossed by wooden
17:19foot bridges that gave the village its
17:20name. Beach clubs on the lake shores, a
17:24town center within walking distance of
17:26most homes. Public paths along the
17:28water. Private waterfront residences
17:31beside them. a 20- foot high private
17:33hedge ringing the entire village,
17:36walling it off from the arterial roads
17:38beyond. It was a self-contained world.
17:41You could walk your kids to school, bike
17:44to the grocery store, swim in a lake,
17:46and never touch a freeway. That was the
17:49promise, and Woodbridge delivered on it.
17:52The population surged. By 1980, Irvine
17:56had 62,000 residents. by 1990, 110,000.
18:02But here's the pivot that turns Irvine
18:04from a wellplanned suburb into something
18:06genuinely unprecedented. In 1977, a
18:10federal law, the Tax Reform Act of 1969,
18:14which had taken years to enforce,
18:16finally forced the James Irvine
18:18Foundation to sell its controlling stake
18:21in the Irvine Company. foundations,
18:24Congress had decided, could no longer
18:26hold majority positions in operating
18:28businesses. The Irvine Company went on
18:31the market, and the bidding was fierce.
18:34Mobile Corporation, the oil giant, put
18:37in an offer. Imagine that for a moment.
18:40One of the largest petroleum companies
18:42in the world trying to buy a 100,000
18:45acres of Southern California. They were
18:48outbid. The winning group was a
18:51consortium led by A. Alfred Taubman from
18:53Detroit. It included Henry Ford III and
18:58it included a relatively quiet real
19:00estate developer from Orange County
19:02named Donald Bren.
19:05Bren paid in as a minority investor
19:07contributing enough for a 34% stake. The
19:11total purchase price was $337.4
19:14million. one of the largest private land
19:17acquisitions in California history. That
19:20number is important. Remember the
19:23$40,000 that James Irvine and his
19:26partners paid in the 1860s?
19:29A century later, the same land sold for
19:31over $30 million.
19:34And yet, in hindsight, even 337 million
19:38was absurdly cheap. Because Donald Bran
19:41understood something. Bran was the son
19:44of a Hollywood movie producer, but he'd
19:46grown up watching his father's real
19:48estate deals more closely than his film
19:50sets. After the University of Washington
19:52on a skiing scholarship, he'd tried for
19:55the 1956 Olympic team and missed it
19:57after an injury and three years as a
20:00Marine Corps officer. He'd started
20:02building homes in 1958 at the age of 26.
20:06By 1963, he'd co-founded the Mission
20:09Viejo Company and masterplanned an
20:12entire city of 10,000 acres south of the
20:15ranch. International Paper had bought
20:17him out for $34 million in 1970. He
20:21bought himself back for 22 million
20:23during the recession two years later.
20:26The man knew how land worked. He knew
20:29that Southern California had one
20:31direction, [music] growth, and that the
20:33Irvine Ranch, even partially developed,
20:36was not a piece of real estate. It was a
20:38machine for creating value that would
20:41never stop running because the land was
20:44still whole. The plan was still intact
20:47and the freeways that the California
20:49legislature had approved in 1959,
20:52three of them, now linked the ranch
20:54property directly to the entire Los
20:56Angeles metropolitan area. Over the next
21:006 years, as Toddman and Ford lost
21:02interest or needed liquidity, Bren
21:04steadily bought their shares. In 1983,
21:08he was elected chairman of the board and
21:10became majority owner. The immediate
21:13payout for Joan Irvine Smith's remaining
21:15family stake came to roughly half a
21:18billion dollars. The company's total
21:20valuation had climbed to around a
21:22billion, tripling in 6 years. By 1996,
21:27Bren had purchased every remaining
21:29share. He was the sole owner of the
21:32Irvine Company, one [music] man holding
21:35the same land that one man had held a
21:38century before.
21:40The pattern held. What Bren did next is
21:43what separates Irvine from every other
21:45masterplanned community in American
21:47history. Restston, Virginia went [music]
21:50bankrupt. Colombia, Maryland went
21:52bankrupt. Irvine never did. Bren ran the
21:56company with the patience of a farmer
21:58and the discipline of a marine, which he
22:00was, having served as an officer after
22:02college. He set design standards that
22:05would make the most demanding homeowners
22:07association look casual. Every single
22:10family home had to have windows on all
22:13four sides. Roofs required ceramic
22:16shingles or terracotta tiles. Each
22:19village received a plant pallet, a list
22:21of exactly which trees, shrubs, and
22:24grasses were permitted. Bren himself has
22:27been known to drive around the city and
22:29direct his staff to redo landscaping or
22:32design details he found insufficient.
22:35He wasn't building houses to sell. He
22:38was building a place to hold. And hold
22:41he did. Unlike most developers who build
22:44and flip, Bren kept the commercial
22:46properties, the office buildings, the
22:48apartment complexes, the shopping
22:50centers. Today, the Irvine Company owns
22:53more than 590 office buildings, 125
22:57apartment communities with 65,000 units,
23:0140 shopping centers, five marinas, three
23:04golf courses, and a coastal resort.
23:08129 million square ft of rentable space.
23:11[music] The annual rental income alone
23:13is staggering, though the company being
23:15private does not release its financials.
23:18What we know is that Donald Bran's net
23:21worth derived almost entirely from this
23:23one company and this one piece of land
23:26sits at approximately $18 billion. He is
23:30the wealthiest real estate developer in
23:32America. He owns the Metife building in
23:35Manhattan and the core of his empire is
23:38still the same dirt that James Irvine
23:41bought from a desperate rancher during a
23:43drought. The city kept growing and Bran
23:46kept building, not just homes, but the
23:48commercial infrastructure that would
23:50fund everything else. In 1989, the
23:54Irvine Company completed two 15story
23:56office towers at the southeastern edge
23:59of the ranch, anchoring what would
24:01become the Irvine Spectrum Business
24:03District. Planning for the retail
24:06portion had begun in 1985,
24:08and in 1993, construction started on
24:12what was originally called the
24:13entertainment center at the Irvine
24:15Spectrum. It opened on November 22nd,
24:191995.
24:21a massive outdoor complex with Moorish
24:24revival architecture, a giant ferris
24:27wheel, and a 21c screen regal cinema.
24:31Sega opened its first ever arcade venue
24:34there. The center now draws over 17
24:37million visitors a year and has expanded
24:40through six phases over three decades.
24:44Meanwhile, on the other end of the
24:45company's holdings, Fashion Island was
24:47having its own second and third lives.
24:50It had opened in Newport Beach on
24:52September 9th, 1967,
24:55the same year as the rival South Coast
24:57Plaza 5 miles away in Costa Mesa as a 75
25:00acre 20 million complex designed by
25:04Pereira and Welton Beckett with parking
25:06for 5,500 cars.
25:0918,000 people turned out for the opening
25:12night charity celebration. The original
25:14anchors were Robinsons, JC Penney,
25:17Buffams, and the Broadway. Names that
25:19evoke a vanished era of California
25:22department store culture. By the 2020s,
25:25those anchors had been replaced by
25:27Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus,
25:30and Macy's. The center had been
25:32renovated four times, most recently in a
25:35$100 million reinvestment that
25:37transformed its architecture and outdoor
25:40spaces. Its vacancy rate in its entire
25:4350 plus year history has never gone
25:46above single digits. Fashion Island now
25:49draws 16 million visitors annually to 1
25:531/2 million square ft of retail. Its koi
25:56pond, 80 fish, 20,000 gallons installed
26:00in 1969
26:02remains one of the most photographed
26:04spots in Orange County. Between these
26:07two anchors, the city filled in village
26:10after village, 22 of them now, each with
26:12its own architectural character, its own
26:15schools, its own parks. Northwood with
26:18its century old eucalyptus windows. West
26:21Park with its Mediterranean pallet.
26:23Forola Springs climbing the eastern
26:25hills, and then the base closed. Marine
26:29Corps Air Station El Toro had opened in
26:32November of 1942, built on what was then
26:35still LMA Bean Fields at the edge of the
26:38ranch. The name came from a nearby
26:40settlement of about 130 people.
26:43Lieutenant Colonel William Fox had
26:45selected the site because the terrain
26:47was flat, the weather was clear, and the
26:50Irvine Company's land was available. For
26:5357 years, fighter jets roared over
26:55southern Orange County during World War
26:58II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War. The
27:02base covered 4,700 acres [music] with
27:04two 8,000 ft runways and two 10,000 ft
27:08runways capable of handling every
27:11aircraft in the military inventory.
27:13Its logo, a flying bull, had been
27:16designed by Walt Disney in 1944 and
27:20never changed. In 1950, El Toro was
27:24designated a permanent master jet
27:26station for Fleet Marine Forces Pacific.
27:30Several presidents, including Ronald
27:32Reagan, landed there when visiting
27:34Southern California.
27:36For many Marines heading to Vietnam, it
27:38was the last American soil they stood
27:41on. For some of them, it was also the
27:44last. In 1993, the base realignment and
27:48closure commission marked El Toro for
27:50shutdown. [music]
27:51On July 2nd, 1999,
27:54MCAS El Toro officially closed. Its
27:57operations transferred to Marine Corps
27:59Air Station Myiramar near San Diego. And
28:03suddenly, nearly 5,000 acres of land in
28:06the middle of Irvine, surrounded by a
28:0814,000 acre buffer zone that the
28:11military had maintained for noise
28:13liability, were available for the first
28:15time since the Second World War. What
28:18followed was one of the most contentious
28:20land use battles in Orange County
28:22history. One faction wanted to convert
28:25the base into a commercial airport. Its
28:27runways were already built. Its
28:29infrastructure was in place. Northern
28:32Orange County wanted the convenience.
28:34Newport Beach residents hoped it might
28:37relieve pressure on John Wayne Airport.
28:40The opposing faction, led largely by the
28:43city of Irvine and the communities
28:45surrounding the base, wanted a park. The
28:48fight consumed county politics for
28:50years. Ballot measures, lawsuits,
28:53dueling environmental studies. In 2001,
28:57Orange County voters passed Measure W,
29:00authorizing the former air station's
29:02conversion into a park and mixeduse
29:04development. The airport proposal died
29:08and the Orange County Great Park was
29:10born. Approved at a projected cost of
29:141.1 billion.
29:16Intended to be the largest new municipal
29:19park built in California in a
29:21generation. 1,300 acres of it now sit
29:25where Marines once trained. and the
29:27surrounding land has been reszoned for
29:29housing, adding thousands of new
29:32residents to a city that was already
29:34growing at a pace that would have
29:36shocked William Pereira. The population
29:39numbers tell the story more starkly than
29:41anything else. In 1970, the year before
29:44incorporation, 34,000 people. In 1980,
29:4962,000.
29:51In 1990,
29:53110,000.
29:55In 2000,
29:57143,000.
29:59In 2010, 212,000.
30:03In 2020, 37,000.
30:07That is a 900% increase in 50 years
30:11[music] from a standing start. And
30:14unlike most cities that grow that fast,
30:16Irvine did not sprawl. It did not
30:19fragment. It did not descend into the
30:21usual American chaos of competing
30:24jurisdictions and overlapping strip
30:26malls. It grew on plan. By the 2000s,
30:30the tech industry had discovered what
30:32the land had to offer. And the
30:34discovery, it turned out, had roots
30:36going back to the very decision that
30:37created the city. UC Irvine's research
30:41parks and engineering programs had been
30:43spinning off companies since the 70s.
30:46But two founding stories from 1991
30:49capture the moment when Irvine stopped
30:52being a suburb and started becoming
30:54something else. That year, Henry Samueli
30:57and Henry Nicholas, two engineers out of
31:00UCLA, founded Broadcom in Irvine, a
31:04semiconductor company that would grow
31:06into a global technology giant whose
31:08chips power the world's data centers and
31:11wireless networks.
31:13The same year, three UCLA graduates
31:16named Alan Adam, Michael Moheim, and
31:19Frank Pierce founded a small game studio
31:22they initially called Silicon and
31:25Synapse. They worked out of a cramped
31:27space in Irvine, building games for
31:30other publishers. The company changed
31:32its name a few times before settling on
31:35Blizzard Entertainment. Then they built
31:38World of Warcraft and the world changed.
31:42Today, Blizzard's sprawling Irvine
31:45campus employs around 7,000 people. The
31:48company generated 5.7 billion dollars in
31:52revenue in 2024.
31:55Its most famous products, Warcraft,
31:57Diablo, Overwatch were conceived and
32:01built in a city that when the company
32:03was founded had barely a 100,000
32:06residents and was still surrounded by
32:08open land. CrowdStrike, the cyber
32:11security firm that made global headlines
32:13in 2024, established major operations in
32:16Irvine. And Industries, the defense
32:20technology company founded in 2017 by
32:22Palmer Lucky, the man who invented the
32:24Oculus Rift virtual reality headset
32:27before selling it to Facebook for $2
32:29billion, chose Irvine for its
32:32headquarters, building AIdriven
32:34autonomous drones and surveillance
32:36systems. Anderil reached a billion
32:39dollars in revenue in 2024 with roughly
32:423,500 employees. More than 17,000
32:46companies now operate in the city,
32:48generating 28 billion annually. The
32:51average tech salary runs around
32:53$120,000.
32:55UC Irvine alone contributes over $5
32:58billion to the regional economy. And in
33:012024, the federal government designated
33:04Irvine as an official tech hub, a formal
33:07acknowledgement of something the numbers
33:09had been saying for years. The dollar
33:12anacre LMA bean fields are producing
33:14value at a rate that would have been
33:15incomprehensible to every previous owner
33:18of the land. And then there's the safety
33:20record. For nearly 20 consecutive years,
33:23the FBI's Uniform Crime Report has
33:26ranked Irvine the safest large city in
33:28America. The lowest violent crime rate
33:31of any city with a population over
33:33250,000.
33:35This is not an accident. It is, like
33:38everything else in Irvine, a product of
33:40design. The village structure creates
33:42what researchers call cohesion.
33:45residential neighborhoods placed away
33:47from major thorough affairs, well-lit
33:49streets, abundant parks, and community
33:51centers. A police department that has
33:54been funded at levels most cities would
33:56envy, supported by the commercial tax
33:58base that the master plan deliberately
34:00created. The Irvine Company's commercial
34:03properties generate tens of millions of
34:06dollars in annual tax revenue for the
34:08city, which flows directly into
34:10services. The architecture of the plan
34:12is also the architecture of safety. But
34:16there is a question that the plan never
34:17quite answers. And it's the question
34:19that the audience for this story, the
34:22people who love the grand hotels and the
34:24busy commercial [music] streets and the
34:26architecture built to last will
34:28inevitably ask. Where is the surprise?
34:32Where is the jazz club that opened
34:34because the rent was cheap and the owner
34:36was a character? Where is the hotel
34:39lobby where deals were made over bourbon
34:42at midnight? Where is the building that
34:44shouldn't have worked but did? The block
34:47that evolved over a century from
34:50warehouse to gallery to restaurant row.
34:54Irvine has none of these things and it
34:57was designed not to have them. Every
35:00tree is on a pallet. Every roof line is
35:03approved. Every village has its own
35:06character. But the character was chosen,
35:09not grown. The median home price in
35:11Irvine reached $1.42 million in 2024.
35:16The city is 68% more expensive than the
35:18national average. Its population is
35:21remarkably diverse, roughly 45%
35:24Asian-American, 39% white, with
35:27significant communities from dozens of
35:29countries. It is by every measurable
35:31standard one of the most successful
35:34cities in the United States. It works.
35:37The schools are excellent. The parks are
35:39immaculate. The crime rate is
35:41vanishingly low. The economy is
35:44enormous. And the man who controls it
35:46all, Donald Bren, now 94 years old,
35:50still drives around occasionally to
35:52check that the landscaping meets his
35:54standards. He has donated over 57,000
35:57acres of the original ranch to be
35:59preserved as permanent open space, more
36:02than half the total acreage. a gesture
36:05of conservation so large that it would
36:07be a landmark act even if it came from
36:09the federal government, let alone a
36:12single private land owner. There's a
36:14spot in the Irvine Ranch Natural
36:16Landmarks where you can stand and see in
36:18one unbroken sweep the preserved
36:20wilderness running from the coastal
36:22mountains to the sea. [music] There's no
36:24development in sight. The grass and
36:26scrub look almost exactly like what
36:28James Irvine would have seen when he
36:30first rode onto this land in the 1860s,
36:33or close to it. Anyway, behind you to
36:36the north and west, 300,000 people live
36:39in 22 villages designed by teams of
36:42architects and planners who spent
36:44decades thinking about how wide a green
36:46belt should be and which direction a
36:49living room window should face. The land
36:51is both empty and full. It is the most
36:54carefully controlled significant piece
36:56of real estate in the United States.
36:59Simultaneously preserved and monetized,
37:02wild and manicured, governed by a single
37:05vision and inhabited by people from
37:08every corner of the world. William
37:10Pereira, who started all of this by
37:12standing on a hilltop above the bean
37:14fields, once said something that the
37:16Irvine Company likes to quote. If a
37:18hundred years from now the campus and
37:20its community still look as we picture
37:22them in our master plan, we shall have
37:25in a sense failed. He meant that good
37:28planning should allow for evolution, for
37:30surprise, for the kind of change that no
37:33planner can predict. He died in 1985, 20
37:37years into the experiment. Whether
37:40Irvine has fulfilled his hope or his
37:42fear depends on what you believe a city
37:45is for. The bean fields are gone. Every
37:49last acre of them. Where they were,
37:51there are now office towers and
37:52apartment complexes and bike paths and
37:55artificial lakes and $10 million homes
37:57with terracotta roofs and windows on all
38:00four sides.
38:01The Irvine Historical Museum, the oldest
38:04standing structure within the original
38:06ranch boundaries, built in 1868 when
38:09James Irvine the First needed somewhere
38:11to stay during his visits, sits in the
38:14middle of a city that didn't exist when
38:16the last lima bean was harvested.
38:19It's a small building. The land around
38:21it is worth more per square foot than
38:23most downtown districts in America.
38:26$18,000.
38:28108,000 acres. $1 337
38:33million 18 billion. The numbers tell one
38:36story, the land tells another. And the
38:39city, Irvine, California, population
38:42318,000,
38:44safe and planned and humming with
38:46commerce. The most improbable city in
38:48America. The city tells a third story.
38:52One that isn't finished yet. One that
38:54may never look quite the way anyone
38:56imagined. Because that's the thing about
38:59land. You can plan everything on it. You
39:01can control everything about it. You can
39:04design the windows and the roof lines
39:06and the plant pallets and the bicycle
39:08corridors. But you can't design what the
39:11people who live there will remember or
39:14what they'll miss or what they'll wish
39:16for in a moment of quiet standing at the
39:19edge of a green belt as the sun drops
39:22behind the Santa Ana mountains and the
39:24last light catches the curve of a road
39:26that someone 60 years ago drew on a
39:30piece of paper and said, "Here, put it
39:34Here.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of The Most Impossible Rise of a City Ever: Irvine, California by Paul McAllister, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 5,545 words across 891 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.