Irvine’s 20th Birthday Will Be Low-Key

IRVINE —  Contrary to its appearance, that is not a rusting satellite dish sitting in the middle of the Civic Center plaza.

The dish-shaped device with a tractor hookup on one end looks like something ranchers might have used to pick up “I Love Lucy” out in the fields. But it actually was used 40 years ago on the Irvine Ranch to catch bean straw spewed from the back of a thresher.

As the city begins today to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Irvine officials are presenting the 1948 straw catcher and 14 other farm implements that now decorate the Civic Center plaza as testimony to the city’s agricultural roots.

The anniversary will be decidedly more low-key than city officials had hoped. Irvine officials had planned to bring out as many former city leaders as they could to kick off the agricultural display with a public ceremony.

But because of an ongoing budget crunch, this and other plans were scrapped, and the city turned over staffing of the event to the Irvine Historical Society. The city even lost its special events coordinator--who was to have helped organize the project--because of cutbacks.

“We took some substantial hits in the budget process. Some things have fallen out as a response to that,” said Henry Korn, the city’s manager of cultural affairs.

The historical society will try to spice the celebration up by bringing all of the city’s former mayors to the Civic Center during today’s official opening of the agricultural display, said Ed Portmann, the group’s president.

The city is hoping that the financial picture is brighter by the time the city celebrates its silver anniversary in 1996, making more events possible. But in the meantime, the farm equipment, along with pamphlets showing how residents can take a self-guided tour of significant sights on the Irvine Ranch, are the only formal activities the city has undertaken to celebrate the birthday, said Toni McDonald, a Community Services Department superintendent.

Irvine will leave its teen-age years on Dec. 28, two decades after Secretary of State Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. certified the voters’ decision a week earlier to create Orange County’s second largest city in land area.

The farm display will remain at the Civic Center until March 8. It includes information about the equipment, and residents who come to the Civic Center today can expect to hear city history buffs explain the devices and their significance.

The city will spend about $12,000 on this year’s anniversary, which will include banners decorating the Civic Center, Korn said. One-third of the anniversary budget alone went to moving the farm equipment to the Civic Center, Korn said.

The farm equipment, much of it from the early 1900s, was provided by the Irvine Historical Society. The equipment includes an irrigation ditch grader, cabbage wagon, a 1946 insecticide spray wagon, a honey separator, a circa-1920 fire hose caddy and other equipment common on the sprawling Irvine Ranch.

The city chose an agricultural theme for the anniversary because Irvine sits on top of a section of the old Irvine Ranch, Korn said. Homes, shopping centers and huge business and industrial complexes have over time replaced many of the fields and grazing land, but the theme will help tie the urbanizing city to its past, Korn said.

Irvine was a world leader in producing fruits and vegetables such as asparagus, lima beans, strawberries and oranges. By 1908, the Irvine Ranch was producing more barley, sugar beets, oranges, walnuts and olives than any other ranch in the state. An asparagus stalk decorates the right side of the city seal, although many people mistake the stylized artwork for a tree.

Irvine: A Short History

1870--James Irvine buys out his partners for $150,000 and becomes sole owner of the sprawling Irvine Ranch.

1894--James Irvine’s son, also named James, incorporates the ranch as the Irvine Co., beginning the transition from grazing to farming.

1914--Town of Myford renamed Irvine.

1923--Nobel laureate Albert A. Michelson builds a milelong tube on the Irvine Ranch, where he takes the most accurate measure to date of the speed of light. It helps verify Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

1930--”All Quiet on the Western Front” films battle scenes on the Irvine Ranch, where the Irvine Coast Country Club stands today.

1959--The University of California Board of Regents selects a site on the Irvine Ranch for its newest campus. The announcement prompts the Irvine Co. to draft a master plan to guide the area’s growth.

1964--President Lyndon B. Johnson dedicates UC Irvine.

1969--San Diego Freeway opens.

1970--The Irvine Co. publicizes its latest master plan for development, outlining a city of 430,000 by the year 2000.

1971--With nearby cities threatening to gobble up portions of Irvine, residents vote to incorporate as a city. New City Council immediately questions Irvine Co.’s plan for city of 430,000 and begins process of drafting city’s own General Plan on growth.

1973--City adopts a General Plan with three possibilities: a city similar to what the Irvine Co. envisioned, but with a population of 337,000; a second option with a population of 453,000, or a third option with minimum urbanization and a population of 194,000.

1976--The private Christ College Irvine opens its small liberal arts campus in the hills around Turtle Rock.

1977--Private investors headed by A. Alfred Taubman and Donald Bren gain control of the Irvine Co.

1978--Larry Agran, running on a platform to slow the pace of Irvine’s growth, handily wins a seat on the City Council. He serves for 12 years, stressing slower growth, more open space and more housing for lower-income families.

1982--U.S. News and World Report names Irvine one of the 10 best places in the country to live.

1983--Bren purchases a controlling interest in the Irvine Co.

1986--For the first time in Irvine’s history, voters elect a slow-growth majority to the City Council. Ed Dornan wins a seat, along with a third term for Agran. The two join fellow slow-growth proponent Ray Catalano, a professor of urban planning at UCI.

1988--Voters approve a plan to adopt a Conservation/Open Space agreement with the Irvine Co. that would allow the company to build more densely in the central city in exchange for dedicating 9,000 acres of open space for public use.

June, 1990--Voters sweep Agran and other slow-growth members from the City Council and elect a council majority that favors approving huge Irvine Co. residential developments. The new leaders are Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan, Barry J. Hammond and William A. (Art) Bloomer.

December, 1990--The new City Council approves the 3,850-home Westpark II community that the Irvine Co. had withdrawn less than a year earlier because of strict affordable-housing requirements mandated by the Agran-led council.

January, 1991--Irvine Tomorrow, a slow-growth group, forces the council to place the Westpark II building plan on the ballot by collecting thousands of signatures outside supermarkets.

November, 1991--Voters narrowly reject Irvine Tomorrow’s arguments against Westpark II and approve the Irvine Co.’s development. The company spends almost $600,000 defending the project, the most expensive campaign in city history.

Sources: “Postsuburban California” by Rob Kling, Spencer Olin and Mark Poster; The Irvine Co.; city of Irvine.