Metro Cities
Santa Ana has heartland rights, too. It is the county seat, second oldest among the county’s 34 cities and has the oldest downtown. Tustin could also make a few points; its massive twin hangars, for instance, are near the county’s geographic center.
But residents of Costa Mesa would say that its quarter square mile along Bristol Street, adjacent to the San Diego Freeway, is hands-down the county’s heart and its cultural soul.
Costa Mesa
On the west side of Bristol is South Coast Plaza, whose annual sales of $1.5 billion is highest among shopping destinations nationwide. On the other side is the county’s unquestioned center of culture—two concert halls and its largest repertory theater—and business high-rises.
Henry Segerstrom and his family founded South Coast Plaza in 1967 on a lima bean field where as a youth he’d driven a tractor. Today, South Coast Plaza and its Bear Street wing, connected by the Bridge of Gardens, offer several hundred stores, boutiques and restaurants. The state-designated tourist attraction boasts the nation’s highest concentration of elite retailers, including Christian Louboutin for shoes, De Beers for diamonds and Assouline for books; superb dining options include Marché Moderne and The Capital Grille.
It’s an easy walk to the “arts campus,” the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, South Coast Repertory and, in the not-too-distant future, Orange County Museum of Art. The Segerstrom Center for the Arts, built in 1986 mainly with Segerstrom money on Segerstrom land, includes 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall, presenting a range of genres including dance and Broadway musicals, and the newer Renée and Henry Segerstrom Hall, a 2,000-seat facility designed by Cesar Pelli that hosts events as diverse as tributes to Mahler and Paul McCartney. There are two intimate venues within the venues, Founders Hall and Samueli Theater, respectively.
South Coast Repertory, which now has three stages inside its gleaming Folino Theatre Center, opened at its present location in 1978, also with Segerstrom family donations of land and money. It is the county’s most highly touted theater. Nearby, among Town Center’s professional buildings, is one of the nation’s premier collections of outdoor art. Start, or end, at the 1.6-acre California Scenario (near Anton Boulevard) by sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
Metro Pointe and South Coast Plaza Village—whose movie theater is often ahead of the curve with top foreign films—are a crosswalk away. All three retail centers are accessible from North or South County hotels and beyond, thanks to dedicated taxi and motor coach service. Amtrak’s Pacific Surf-liner delivers visitors from San Diego and Los Angeles to the Santa Ana train station. To the west is the new South Coast Collection of design showrooms and the OC Mart Mix.
South on Bristol are The Lab and The Camp.The Lab is an alternative retail center with shops you’d likely find on L.A.’s hip Melrose Avenue. Opposite is the Camp, an outdoors-themed center set amid woods, aluminum and piped-in sounds of brooks and crickets. Dining options include Taco Asylum for unusual tacos and Ecco for Italian cuisine.
The Orange County Fair and Event Center, opposite the Civic Center, hosts events year-round—gun shows, gem shows, motocross racing—the county fair in July and pop concerts at the Pacific Amphitheatre.
Santa Ana
Santa Ana aligns itself with the arts; downtown are the Artists Village, Santora Arts Complex and Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center. The new East End Promenade replaces the Fiesta Marketplace along historic Fourth Street; the Yost Theater, now a concert venue, is a centerpiece. The area is filled with hip restaurants and bars. Historical highlights include the 122-year-old, Queen Anne-style home of Dr. Willella Howe-Waffle, and the red sandstone Old County Courthouse, used as a setting for numerous movies.
Bowers Museum recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. Bowers offers blockbuster exhibitions mounted with the world’s major museums. Visitors also view pre-Columbian artifacts, Pacific Island art or artifacts from American whalers two centuries back; a real gem is its permanent exhibit of local history, dating back beyond the Spanish rancho days.
The mammoth tilting cube at the Discovery Science Center, perched seemingly inches off Interstate 5, may be the city’s most recognizable icon. Westfield MainPlace houses Macy’s, Nordstrom and 200 shops. Intimate Santa Ana Zoo, in Prentice Park, is home to 250 species and features a primate exhibit, African aviary and children’s zoo.
Irvine
Its Giant Wheel can be seen for miles along the 5, 405 and 133 freeways. But it’s the Irvine Spectrum Center’s 150 shops, many of them entertainment-related, top-notch new restaurants including Cucina Enoteca and Paul Martin’s American Grill, and the nation’s most visited movie complex, that together draw more visitors annually than Disneyland.
The Irvine Barclay Theatre, at UC Irvine, presents an impressive roster of music, dance and dramatic events. There’s not a bad seat in the house. Off campus but nearby is the UCI Arboretum (Jamboree Road and Campus Drive, 949.824.5833). San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary (Michelson Drive between Jamboree Road and Culver Drive, 949.261.7963) offers outdoors enthusiasts 10 miles of trails through coastal fresh-water marshlands.
For spirit of place, there may be no better place to start than the Irvine Museum. It houses Joan Irvine Smith’s collection of turn-of-the-20th-century California Impressionist art on the 17th floor of an office building.
At some point the fledgling Orange County Great Park will be a centerpiece of recreation, twice the size of New York’s Central Park. For now, there are outdoor events, such as a weekly farmers market, a small military museum and a new gallery; you can also ride 500 feet up in the iconic tethered orange balloon.
The restored blacksmith shop and general store of Old Town Irvine (Sand Canyon Avenue and Burt Road, 949.660.9112), near Interstate 5, now house a hotel and restaurants.
Irvine offers a relatively problem-free world carved from the Irvine Co.’s huge land holdings. The vibe extends to John Wayne Airport, whose pleasant ambience and ease of departure and arrival make it vastly superior to LAX.
Tustin
Forbes magazine recently listed Tustin in its Top 25 places “to live well.” The city, known for its fine parks and for the thousands of trees planted more than a century ago by forward-thinking residents, has also preserved many of its 1870s buildings along Main Street and El Camino Real.
The District at Tustin Legacy, at Jamboree Road and Barranca Parkway, is a sprawling shopping center with scores of shops. Draws include restaurants such as The Winery and Bluewater Grill, a cineplex, bowling at Bowlmor, outdoor fireplaces, a stage for bands and giant video walls. Drive by the nearby twin hangars for a sense of their magnitude—1,000 feet long, 17 stories tall and five acres of open space within each.
The Market Place, on Jamboree Road off Interstate 5, is older and even more sprawling. Though it’s often refered to as the Tustin Market Place, part of it is actually in Irvine.
The Marconi Automotive Museum displays 80 vehicles, notably Ferraris and historic open-wheel race cars.
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