Seventeen years after Ken Smith Workshop’s master plan for Irvine, California’s Great Park was approved, an updated scheme will envision a new era for the park. SWA Group’s Laguna Beach studio has released its plans for the 1,200-acre Orange County park, working with local planning and urban design firm Kellenberg Studio.

Currently, the park features a visitors center, outdoor agricultural classroom, water park, extensive athletic facilities, an arts complex, considerable parking space, and 1.5 miles of pedestrian and cycling trails, that will soon be joined by an amphitheater, museum complex, botanical garden, and public library.

Built on the site of the former Marine Corps El Toro Air Station, the park has been long envisioned as California’s Central Park. A 2006 design competition, won by Ken Smith Workshop, brought forth a new vision for the park. While some parts of the park came to fruition, including an often-photographed orange hot air balloon ride, the full plan was never realized.

The park has become a fixture in local politics. In a deposition, a worker from the construction management company, MCK, who performed program management, construction management, and advisory roles on the project, described aspects of Smith’s design as inconstructible. This included a man-made lake that would have required the Navy to clean up contaminated groundwater and the redirection of water into a wildlife corridor. The Smith plan also included a man-made canyon.