Columbus, Ohio, kicked off the modern live-work-play era of sports-centric development in America in 2000 with the opening of Nationwide Arena and the Arena District. Since then, investors around the country have built on the foundational concept to create stadium-adjacent communities, whether in undeveloped parts of town like The Battery just outside the City of Atlanta proper, or Petco Park, which is nestled into a residential district in San Diego. Anaheim, California, is at the intersection of new meets old.
The Honda Center opened in 1993 and for much of its life has been surrounded by open-air surface parking lots and industrial facilities. By 2033, that will all change. The Samueli family purchased the Anaheim Ducks in 2005 and over the next decade began to plan for the future of the franchise.
That future included the need to purchase land from the City of Anaheim, a process that began in November 2018. Today, the 110-acre area surrounding the Honda Center is being redeveloped into OCVIBE, a multi-use, live-work-play development. A new whitepaper by Visit Anaheim estimates that $262 billion in investment is going into 107 mixed use developments anchored by sports that are open, under construction or planned.
Mixed-use development turns spaces routinely left barren outside of game times into true communities Mike Waterman, president and CEO of Visit Anaheim, told Newsweek. And, that is precisely the aim of OCVIBE. It is backed by a $5 billion commitment by the Samuelis.
"Henry and Susan have been remarkable," Waterman said. The 62 acres of surface parking lots will be removed and replaced with structures with room for 11,000 vehicles. Two-thousand residential units will be built on the property as well as 36 restaurants, six bars, 168,000 square feet of office space, two hotels, and 20 acres of open space, including a meadow.
The 17,000-seat Honda Center will be joined by a 5,000-seat concert hall. That's fundamentally changing. The next generation of sports-anchored development is about creating places that attract people every day of the year, with sports and entertainment serving as the foundation for a much broader mix of experiences,” Dan Young, executive director of development at OCVIBE, told Newsweek.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
