Much of today’s Newport Beach was originally part of the 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch, where development began in the 1940s.
In the 1960s, Irvine Company hired architect and urban planner William Pereira to create the Irvine Ranch Master Plan. The historic document set in motion the creation of UC Irvine, the city of Irvine and much of Newport Beach, creating one of America’s most desirable regions. The first residential village produced by the Master Plan was the 619-acre Village of Eastbluff, which opened in 1964 in the heart of Newport Beach, overlooking Back Bay and Newport Bay.
A map of modern Eastbluff reflects the Master Plan’s innovative vision. Each new village encompasses a community with a variety of housing types, clustered around schools, parks and shopping. The example given at the time Eastbluff was planned to explain how a village should have a sense of place and a variety of land and property? Balboa Island.
‘Playing in the greenbelts’
Originally a mesa, zoned for industrial use, Eastbluff was rezoned for homes. Eastbluff’s builders were required to hire architects, an Irvine Company innovation at the time.
Eastbluff features a mix of both traditional single-family homes and The Bluffs, a community of attached homes closer to the bay, with greenbelts of grass, trees and walkways meandering through the community. Nearly 40% of the village’s acres are preserved as parks, greenbelts and gathering spaces.
“I had a childhood spent outdoors,” says Bonnie Gulley, who grew up in Eastbluff in the 1980s. “We’d be out playing in the greenbelts with our friends all weekend long.” Gulley’s parents bought a home in Eastbluff in 1974. Fifty years later, her mother still lives there.
An elementary school, park, tennis club and retail center can be found on one side of the village, with the high school and a church on the other. All are connected by paths and paseos, including walkable and bikeable access to the Mountains to Sea Trail & Bikeway. The shared greenbelt and open spaces are hallmarks of the many Irvine Company villages that came after Eastbluff, including the Newport Beach villages of Bayshores, Cliffhaven, Westcliff, Dover Shores, Irvine Terrace, Bayside, Cameo Shores, Cameo Highlands, Linda Isle, Harbor View Homes, Spyglass Hill and Big Canyon.
A multigenerational design
The intention guiding the plan for the new villages in Newport Beach and Irvine was to create communities with “a cross-section of family life from early marriage to senior citizen status, so people could remain in the same neighborhood, shop at the same stores and have their kids go to the same schools,“ explained Irvine Company chief planner and later president Ray Watson. Watson lived in Eastbluff with his wife, Elsa, for 48 years.
In the 1960s, a home in Eastbluff could be purchased for as little as $22,500. Today, the trees have grown tall, and home values have also burgeoned. But the vision for this community and other Irvine Company villages still holds, as families with young children play in the 15-acre park, kids walk to their schools and young professionals working in nearby Newport Center mingle with retirees strolling the trails, walking dogs and chatting with neighbors.
Bonnie Gulley has since moved away, but still brings her twin 10-year-old boys and her 8-year-old daughter to Eastbluff to visit their grandmother and play in the community pool. “We are definitely taking advantage of the awesomeness of the Eastbluff greenbelt,” she says. “We let the kids roam, and they love that sense of independence.”
“I had a childhood spent outside.” — Bonnie Gulley, who grew up in Eastbluff in the home her mother still lives in.
Generations of Eastbluff residents would agree that their village is where the promise of the Irvine Ranch Master Plan first came true, and still holds, reinforcing a special sense of place and community rooted in smart, balanced design.
