City officials in Irvine, California, may have conceived of Great Park for reasons other than to stimulate residential development. But ever since the first phase of the park opened in 2017, apartments and single-family houses have popped up in nearby neighborhoods.
Irvine and Fort Worth, Texas, are two U.S. cities that have poured money into the development or rehabilitation of public parks and seen a corresponding wave of new commercial projects, according to a report released this week from the Trust for Public Land. Several other cities also have notable initiatives to boost park acreage and locate publicly accessible green space in neighborhoods that lack the amenity, including Atlanta, Chicago and Colorado Springs, Colorado, the nonprofit organization found.
Commercial developers frequently follow close behind when new public parks open, Bianca Clarke, associate vice president at the Trust for Public Land, told CoStar News.
"Parks are a part of a city's appeal and part of why business and developers choose to do projects where they are located," Clarke said.
"In the cities we looked at, we heard loud and clear that if you invest in your parks, you create a city people want to live in and where businesses want to retain and grow talent," she said.
Great Park, which the Trust for Public Land describes as "one of the most ambitious public park projects in the country," is located on a former U.S. Marine Corps airfield and includes a large sports complex with baseball, softball and soccer fields, an ice skating rink, tennis courts, a playground, and a carousel. About 500 acres of the park have opened since construction began in 2007, with the project to ultimately cover about 1,350 acres.
The park, still in development, "has become a lure for families drawn to its expansive recreational fields, playgrounds and events," said Jesse Gundersheim, senior director of market analytics at CoStar.
Five apartment complexes opened near Great Park in 2023 after the green space's initial opening, providing 471 residential units, according to CoStar data. The largest was Lynx Family Partners' 144-unit Belaira. The Irvine Co.'s Pacifica Place, a 1,100-unit apartment project, is under construction and set to open next year.
FivePoint Holdings and the city of Irvine formed a joint venture to develop a community of 10,556 single-family houses called Great Park Neighborhoods located next to the park.
Irvine is the most active area for residential development in Orange County, largely because of Great Park, Gundersheim said.
"There just isn't a lot of available buildable land anywhere else in Orange County," he said.
Growing employment base
Families are moving to neighborhoods near Great Park not just for the outdoor amenities, but because the area has a growing employment base, Gundersheim said.
The population growth has attracted industrial development, including an Amazon fulfillment center at 14300 Alton Parkway in Irvine to serve residents near Great Park, he said.
In Fort Worth, the city currently has 80 active construction projects that involve rehabilitating existing parks or building new ones. The effort is intended to address residents' desire for parks and to preserve the rapidly growing city's remaining green space, according to the Trust for Public Land. Fort Worth loses about 50 acres of natural open space to development each week, the group said.
"We are … very mindful that once the trees are gone, they are gone," Dave Lewis, director of the Fort Worth Park & Recreation Department, told the Trust for Public Land. "Once the green space is paved, it's not coming back."
Fort Worth paid $13.4 million in December for 298 acres of undeveloped land northwest of the city center to develop Tinsley Ranch Park. Developers were already circling the area.
Embrey Partners built townhouses for rent in a project called Collection Hunter Crossroads that opened this year near the park site. Also near the proposed park is the 334-unit Sire Wellington apartment complex that opened in 2023.