Engineering the Perfect Suburb

In the heart of Orange County, California - the poster child for postwar suburban sprawl in the United States - lies a 1500-acre former military base, one of the last remaining major development sites in a 3-million person county with little room to grow. The choices made by local residents and builders in redeveloping Tustin Marine Core Air Station (MCAS) show that Orange County can no longer be stereotyped as the land of endless freeways, widely scattered single-family detached homes on large lots, and homogenous neighborhoods of wealthy, conservative white people. But neither will Orange County necessarily become a place of inevitable, dense urbanization. The innovative development plan proposed for the Navy base, called Tustin Legacy, aligns with a new planning theory - New Suburbanism - that promotes the acceptance and reuse of the suburban form. By merging some of the ideals of the anti-sprawl, Smart Growth movement that currently dominates urban planning theory with the culture of one of America’s most important suburbs, Tustin Legacy may become an important model for the infill development of aging and crowded suburbs across the country. 

A New Look for Orange County

The air base began as a Navy blimp repository in 1942, and after WWII converted to a Marine Corps helicopter station. Over the years, its surroundings changed rapidly - with single-family homes and business parks to the north, low-lying industrial parks and strip malls to the west and south, and the master-planned, ultra-manicured city of Irvine to the east. In 1991, the federal Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission slated Tustin MCAS to close. The Tustin community was deeply invested in redevelopment plans and, in an unusual move for a military community, insisted on the closing. In 1999, the military relocated operations to another air base and granted the property to the city.

The property is a uniquely valuable development parcel in a county where the median home price is over $700,000. The former base has easy access to freeways and the commuter rail “Metrolink” station, linking the site to five surrounding counties, including Los Angeles to the north and San Diego to the south. John Wayne International Airport is also nearby for connections further afield.

The redevelopment plans for the base - already about fifteen percent built out - call for a wide array of uses, including approximately 2,500 new homes, a “community core” of mixed-use buildings; an “Advanced Technology and Education Park” with a range of educational facilities; and a retail and entertainment center, including several national retailers, restaurants, and a multiplex movie theater. A park intended to serve as the premier recreation facility for the area will be at the center of the development, linked via bikeways and walking trails to a system of smaller linear and pocket parks. The project will also include two unique features: a family-oriented homeless shelter and job training facility called the Village of Hope, the most comprehensive capital project ever undertaken by the Orange County Rescue Mission; and two of the largest wood-frame structures in the world: the massive blimp hangers in the middle of the property, each more than 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide.

Even more unusual than these behemoths are the project’s proposed density and (relatively) tall buildings. Most mixed-use development in Orange County is horizontal, according to John Buchanan, Redevelopment Program Manager with the City of Tustin. Tustin hopes to enlist a well known architecture firm to erect “mini skyscrapers” that will give the city a noticeable profile against the low-lying buildings spread over the county. “The challenge,” says Buchanan, “is to create enough density and energy with vertical mixed-use development, on a 24-hour basis… Although there probably won’t be anything over ten stories tall. We’re looking to create something that’s more of an Orange County-type environment than Manhattan.”

Poster Child for New Suburbanism?

What does this kind of infill project represent for the county, and for suburbs as a whole? “Orange County is going back to the initial suburban ideal,” proclaims Joel Kotkin. Kotkin is a proponent of a movement called “New Suburbanism” and the author of a 2005 paper of the same name. Whereas its more established counterpart, New Urbanism, takes cues from “traditional” town planning - epitomized by older European and American cities with narrow, walkable streets, public squares, vernacular architecture, and front porches - New Suburbanism references the Garden City movement of Ebenezer Howard, which envisioned a harmonious balance between housing, industry, and open space in the suburbs. New Urbanism advocates dense, pedestrian-oriented city centers (in the form of infill projects in older cities, or concentrated, axis-oriented “greenfield” designs such as those in Seaside, Florida). New Suburbanism, on the other hand, accepts car-oriented, single-family-home-dominated development, but aims to integrate it with denser, self-sufficient suburbs, some including large apartment buildings upwards of 10 units per acre (not just stereotypical collections of single-family homes) and employment, shopping, and entertainment within suburb limits.

Many New Urbanists decry Kotkin’s New Suburbanist terminology, claiming that he has simply tweaked New Urban ideas for his own purposes. Whether or not Kotkin’s ideas are wholly original, the New Suburbanism concept seems accurate: critics note that many walkable New Urbanist communities are ultimately car-dependent, often in the form of suburbs lacking links to a regional transit system. Whatever these relatively dense and self-sufficient (but still car-dependent) communities are called, they represent a new form of suburban development. 

Tustin’s thoughtful planning could thus qualify the Legacy as a poster child for New Suburbanism’s brand of suburban reuse. While few communities have the luxury of “newly created” wide-open space, as in Tustin or the nearby decommissioned El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, increasing suburban density and intensity of use may be the most viable solution to America’s rapidly crowding suburbs. Tustin Legacy’s design represents an important middle ground between New Urbanism’s focus on the city’s urban form, and developers’ market-driven subdivision expansion farther and farther away from city centers. “People aren’t going back to the corner store,” asserts Kotkin. “Especially when you’re shopping for families, you’re going to shop at the big box retailers.”

In large part, Tustin residents established their vision through an extensive planning process preceding the redevelopment. According to Christine Shingleton, Tustin’s Assistant City Manager and Tustin Legacy Project Coordinator, city planners and a team of outside consultants started out analyzing the redevelopment successes and failures of then-recent base closures across the country. They began devising a plan to incorporate “livable community” and “sustainable design” techniques similar to those promoted by New Urbanism. But while the evolving plans “played off of New Urbanism and those other ideas,” says Shingleton, considerable input from residents helped shape Tustin’s own version of a livable community: “[The plans] became ours, and we embraced them.” The goals for the property and the community articulated by residents included the creation of a new destination with a distinct sense of place; an architectural and economic diversity of housing types; a community-inspiring layout featuring interconnected open space or parkland, human-scaled buildings and social and recreational activity centers; and proximity to jobs, in order to cut down on commute times and decrease area traffic.

Community involvement in the early planning has paid off in that very little, if any, controversy surrounds the complex endeavor; most area residents are “on board” and looking forward to completion. Almost all of the 1,153 buildable acres have been designated for particular developments, and the Navy will provide funding and labor for environmental cleanup efforts to remove hazardous materials from the site. Shingleton hasn’t taken the success of the project to date for granted. “It is like rocket science!” she joked. “It’s not like developing a vacant piece of property - this is infill, brownfield development!”

Planning with Open Arms

In addition to the balance of housing, schools, and parks planned for Tustin Legacy, the city has ensured a diversity of residents by hiring a variety of homebuilders and enacting “inclusive” zoning through different affordable homeownership plans. The city mandated a 25 percent housing affordability provision, higher than anywhere else in the county, meaning that they will lose about $40 million of land value in exchange, according to Shingleton. The economic variety of residents drawn from the surrounding county will most likely mean an ethnic diversity as well: as of 2000, whites represented about half of county residents, with approximately one-third Hispanic, fifteen percent of Asian descent, and the remaining portion African American.
British homebuilder John Laing Homes has completed the first housing on the site, the 376-unit Tustin Fields I, and is nearing completion of another group of homes. According to Dan Flynn, Vice President of Acquisitions at John Laing, their slice of development at Tustin Legacy includes a variety of architectural styles and pricing plans. Densities range from ten to eighteen units per acre, primarily in the form of compact, attached row houses, and homebuyers may pay from $74,000 to more than $500,000, depending on housing type, for adjacent units.

Affordability has drawn county residents to Tustin Fields, but would they prefer a detached home with a big yard and a picket fence? Flynn suggests not: “In Orange County there’s a pent-up demand for the urban lifestyle. Residents are looking for more convenience: no yard to maintain, adjacent to amenities like retail, entertainment, and dry cleaning. They’re willing to sacrifice the bigger house and bigger yard for that convenience.” Alex Alix, who will move into Tustin Fields II with his family, concurs: “The buildings here are more distinct, more bold, than the blander homes in Irvine. There is a noticeable design difference; Tustin has more character.”

But not everyone agrees. Jack Denny, another recent addition to Tustin Fields II, does not consider Tustin Legacy an ideal home, but “you have to pick and choose what fits best” in a county where affordable housing is not prevalent. “There are lots of commuters here, so I haven’t had much time to spend with the neighbors, and the housing is a little tight,” says Denny, but at least the planned high-rises will be reserved for office space, not homes.

Beyond planning the site’s subsidized housing, the City of Tustin has taken suburban “inclusionary” housing to people with far lower incomes than are typically served by such affordable housing programs by building the Village of Hope. The city’s partner in the project, the Orange County Rescue Mission, a 50-year-old “faith-based” non-profit commended by President Bush, provided nearly 1 million meals to the hungry and 35,000 homeless in the county during the last fiscal year. While the Mission does accept non-Christians, according to Melanie McNiff, Director of Communications for the Mission, participants - mostly homeless - must set self-sufficiency goals and accept the organization’s faith-centered mission. Slated to open in summer 2006, the Village will incorporate existing Navy buildings and new construction to house 192 family members and individuals, along with a medical center, job training facility, and chapel, all using $25 million raised by the Mission. “There has been no controversy surrounding our project,” says McNiff. “The Rescue Mission has a good reputation in the county, and we hope to establish partnerships with a lot of the other businesses and schools coming in [to Tustin Legacy], so that they can be a part of the community helping the homeless.”

More Than Just a Pretty Base

Christine Shingleton emphasizes the unusual partnerships that have defined Tustin Legacy to date. “In addition to involving and engaging the community” in the planning process, the city has worked collaboratively with the development community on project designs, Shingleton says. “As opposed to working in isolation to develop plans that don’t reflect reality, we’ve tested the market to create something that can be replicated anywhere. Partnering with the private sector and responding to the market are reasons why this project will be successful.” Working with a variety of experienced suburban developers, including John Laing, Shea Homes, Centex Homes, and Lennar, which also has base reuse experience, the city has assured Tustin Legacy a diversity of home types produced by massive, market-tested homebuilding companies.

At first glance, Tustin Legacy could be labeled simply as a base reuse project, the kind receiving frequent press coverage following each round of military closures. But the city’s “bottom-up” site planning - involving community feedback and incorporating a variety of partnerships between the public, private, and non-profit sectors - offers broader lessons. The colossal blimp hangars represent the kind of unique features that a city can rehabilitate as a recreational facility or museum. Other aspects of the project, from subsidized housing to a network of parks and schools, may serve as a model for suburban infill and the reuse of brownfields or other open space. As built-out suburbs become the focal point for expanding American cities, whether considered “New Suburban,” “New Urban,” or community and market-driven urban planning, Tustin Legacy demonstrates that careful planning can overcome persistent problems of finding ways to provide affordable homes and also meet the frequent community objections to any kind of serious development in desirable suburbs.

John Laing Homes, Orange County
www.johnlainghomes.com/orangecounty/

History of Tustin MCAS
www.militarymuseum.org/MCASTustin.html

Orange County Rescue Mission’s Village of Hope
www.rescuemission.org/1programs/voh/intro/intro.htm

Tustin Legacy (City of Tustin)
www.tustinlegacy.com

Tustin Legacy news from the Orange County Register
www.ocregister.com/community/tustin_news/legacy/