Nearly four decades after Irvine’s landmark Open Space Agreement, a new community-led master plan is poised to connect key open space preserves and add significant acreage to the citywide park system.

Through a series of collaborative workshops involving hundreds of residents, a plan has emerged to transform the private Oak Creek Golf Club into a city-owned public nature park. This 50-plus acre expansion is designed not just as a standalone amenity, but as a plan to resolve one of the city’s longest-standing infrastructure challenges – the “missing middle” of public open space in the city center.

Jeff Davis, senior vice president at Irvine Company, emphasized that the current proposal is a direct result of community engagement, much like the civic consensus that created the city’s open space legacy. “Since this planning process began, hundreds of community members have joined our master-planning effort,” Davis says. “Irvine’s largest new nature park will truly be responsive to the recommendations the community has provided.”

Closing the missing middle

The 1988 Open Space Agreement preserved vast tracts of land on the city’s edges, but a connectivity gap has remained in the city center. For years, the Jeffrey Open Space Trail has been interrupted at Oak Creek, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to navigate around private property and infrastructure barriers.

The proposal addresses this by converting portions of the private golf course into one of the largest city-owned parks in Irvine and the city’s largest nature park. At 50-plus acres, the park will be larger than Bill Barber Memorial, Mike Ward and Heritage Community parks.

Based on priorities identified by residents at planning sessions, the new park will move away from manicured landscaping toward a more natural aesthetic that could include:

• Restored waterways: Creeks and streams
• Native ecology: Meadows and woodlands
• Infrastructure: Bridges to carry trails over train tracks and Irvine Center Drive
• Education: A potential nature center for community programming

Balanced housing approach

The nature park will also anchor a low-density residential village, an alternative to the high-density housing developments currently allowed on the course driving range and nearby commercial property under the city’s general plan.

The planning team, led by naturalist Jenny Rigby and landscape architect Sean O’Malley, continues to host public sessions. Resident feedback is welcome.

irvineconnection.com/nature-park-study