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The Irvine Company is a privately-held real estate development company based in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. Donald Bren is its Chairman.
Operations
The Irvine Company develops suburban master-planned communities throughout central and southern Orange County that attract relatively-affluent residents.
The 94,000-acre Irvine Ranch, of which the company retains 44,000 acres for development and the remainder as wilderness and recreational preserves, remains its core holding. The Ranch encompasses almost one fifth of Orange County, from the Pacific Ocean and Newport Bay, Laguna Beach, and Santa Ana Canyon, to the boundary of the Cleveland National Forest.
A partial list of cities within the boundaries of the Irvine Ranch includes:
The Irvine Company also owns many popular commercial areas, such as Fashion Island, which Newport Beach's Newport Center district surrounds, and the Irvine Spectrum Center.
History
The Irvine Company grew out of the 185-square mile (479 km²) ranch James Irvine, Benjamin and Thomas Flint, and Llewellyn Bixby founded in 1864 from Mexican and Spanish land grants.
Irvine and his partners began by purchasing the Rancho San Joaquin, which constitutes the coastal half of the present-day ranch, from the Mexican aristocrat Jose Antonio Sepulveda. A drought that killed his livestock forced Sepulveda to foreclose his ranch. The partners purchased the second half, Rancho Lomas de Santiagof—largely unfarmable due to its steep, hilly terrain—in 1866 from the Santa Ana-based agricultural entrepreneur William Wolfskill, who had used it largely as a sheep ranch.
In 1959 the company donated 1000 acres and sold 500 acres near Newport Beach to the University of California for construction of a new UC campus (map). The university named the campus after the company, and the university and company together designed the Irvine Ranch Master Plan for developing the surrounding area. The city of Irvine, whose citizens officially incorporated it in 1971, grew around the campus.
Fictional accounts
- The Irvine Company is the model for The O.C.'s The Newport Group, Orange County's most-powerful real estate developer.
External links
- Irvine Company website
- Map of new homes from the Irvine Company
- Map of the Irvine Ranch and information on its master plan
Orange County, California | Developers | Construction and civil engineering companies of the United States
"Irvine Company"