University Park

University Park is Planning Area 20 in the City of Irvine's own layers, about 633 acres of greenbelts and looping residential streets between Culver Drive and the San Diego Freeway, and the City counts 2,825 residential address points inside it. There is no single master association over the village. The City's association layer records six separate ones, University Community and Parkside under Professional Community Management, Terrace under Powerstone, Parkcrest under Seabreeze, the self-managed Village Park Community Association and Parkwood Apartments under Irvine Apartment Communities, so the greenbelt a buyer walks out onto belongs to whichever of the six the address sits in. Village Park, the one that publishes its own facts, describes 636 homes, 379 detached and 257 attached, around more than 35 open acres of greenbelt with pools and spas at two recreation areas and courts for pickleball, tennis and volleyball.

The public side of the village is one park and it is a large one. University Community Park at 1 Beech Tree Lane runs 16.3 acres and opens 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., carrying 4 lighted tennis courts, 3 lighted soccer fields, 3 lighted racquetball and handball courts, a lighted basketball court, 2 lighted sand volleyball courts, a lighted ball diamond and the University Community Center, whose multipurpose rooms, kitchens, courtyard, exercise room and craft room are reservable. Adventure Playground sits next door as a drop-in facility with a tree house and a sensory garden, where the City permits no parties and no private reservations of any kind. University Park Library at 4512 Sandburg Way is one of the three branches of the City-run Irvine Public Library system, and the 339 acre William R. Mason Regional Park with its 9 acre lake runs along the western edge. The village feeds Irvine Unified through University Park Elementary, then Rancho San Joaquin Middle and University High.

This village exists because of the campus next to it. In 1960 the Irvine Company sold 1,000 acres to the University of California for one dollar to build UC Irvine, and in the same year commissioned the architect William Pereira to master plan the whole ranch. Pereira and the company's planners drew a city of some 50,000 people around the university, with industrial zones, residential villages, commercial centers and greenbelts. University Park was the first of those villages to be built, laid out beside the campus and the route of the I-405 as the residential district for people connected to the new university.

Building began in phases in 1965, the year UC Irvine took its first students, and the Irvine Company dates the village to 1966. The layout was drawn by Peter Walker, Dick Law and Kalvin Platt of Sasaki, Walker and Associates on Garden City principles, with clusters of homes turned to face publicly accessible parks and greenbelts tucked away from the main roads so residents could get around on foot. Sales were slow at first. The village stood on its own with nothing built around it and the freeway beside it unfinished.