Doug Irvine of The Register reports that a developer has bought perhaps the last, significant orange grove in Santa Ana …
Empire Homes of Irvine wants to build 24 houses on the land, next to Portola Park in the northeast corner of the city. The company is banking on the idea that the housing market will have at least stabilized by the time the first houses are ready for sale in early 2010, executive vice president Marc Gerber said. He declined to say how much the houses will cost.City planners are reviewing the project and have not yet signed off on it. “It looks like a really great little project,” said Jay Trevino, the executive director of the city’s Planning and Building Agency. There aren’t many places like the old orange grove left in Santa Ana. By the city’s estimates, 98 percent of the land inside its borders is already developed.
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That is truly a shame. I played in orange groves as a kid in Orange, and caught crawdads in the irrigation valve housings that fed the orange groves. OC in the early sixties was a fantastic place to grow up. Now, well, it’s different. But it’s different everywhere. It’s not so much the place, it was the time.
Oh the snobs dont call this area “Santa Ana”, they call it “Cowan Heights” or “Lemon Heights” or “North Tustin”.
bad idea… 98% developed? the city should know better.
I hope the developer likes oranges for a while since the market pretty much will suck for the next 3-5 years.
It is in Santa Ana, right behind Fairhaven Memorial Park. It is not in North Tustin.
developers shouldnt be able to build anymore houses unless they can afford to build a new freeway including buying the land to build it on leave this place alone
What the hell! Let’s leave SOME orange groves somewhere…
This is not within the Santa Ana city limits, although it does have a Santa Ana address. The post office has to delever somewhere.
I grew up in a rural farming area between Bakersfield and Sacramento. We lived 7 miles from town and 1/4 mile from my nearest neighbor. I had a city address.
One thing that might be said: you don’t get the same kind of historical appreciation as a developed area that you do going from orange groves to suburbia. People here like to talk about what a great investment OC RE was over the past 50 years, but that is only because it started out as orange groves and ended up as fully developed suburban sprawl with a lot of industry.
The places that are appreciating now are near the new high paying jobs in the energy sector. Look at the states with price appreciation: Wyoming, Montana, Louisiana, Texas. They also are starting dirt cheap like OC was 50 years ago.
Sad.
Well, VOR, something you and I agree whole-heartily with. I miss the orange groves. To this day, orange blossoms are the best smell to me. And they were all over. Sad that they are thinking of getting rid of them. The only real place now that they have a few (maybe a dozen), is in Irvine along Jeffrey.
There just isn’t enough dirt around for kids to play in these days in OC. Not sure about the 30 year olds, but anyone under 20 is definitely living a different kind of life than some of us who’ve been around here awhile.
Well, as official spokesperson for 30-year-old OC kids everywhere… I can vouch that there were more places to roam than there were for 20 year olds. I grew up in Yorba Linda and learned to drive in Savi Ranch before the stores went up… when there was one road circling the vacant lot. I remember catching tadpoles in a mason jar off the Santa Ana River. That’s of course, still there, but now I know better than to go playing near that water.