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By Eileen Falkenberg-Hull
Senior Editor, Autos, Travel and Lifestyle
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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.
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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 plans are grand. 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.
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“For decades, sports venues were designed to bring people together for a few hours and then send them home. 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.
“The real opportunity in mixed-use development isn't simply putting restaurants, hotels, offices, and entertainment venues next to one another. It's all about creating an environment where each experience makes the others more valuable to the development and the larger community,” he continued.
The larger community includes tourists. Anaheim is the home of Disneyland, which attracts 26.5 million annual visitors who spend $6.8 billion per year in the city.
Keeping Disneyland visitors in Anaheim for one extra day could add billions of dollars in revenue, Waterman estimated. “The average length of stay for a domestic visitor in Anaheim is 2.6 nights. If we can get that person to stay one more night, it's close to a billion dollars of incremental revenue to the city, in just hotel occupancy revenue,” he said.
The OCVIBE area will be ready to welcome them, even when a sporting event isn’t happening. And, it will give locals somewhere to visit and linger as well.
Anaheim residents are already benefitting from tourist attractions in the area. Waterman told Newsweek that, “We’ve done the math, and the amount of TOT that gets collected saves the average resident family that lives in Anaheim close to $9,000 in taxes a year.” Transit Occupancy Taxes have been placed on top of hotel fees and short-term rentals in the city.
There are projected to be 500 hotel rooms at the development when it opens, but Waterman is optimistic that number may rise, saying that Visit Anaheim has had conversations with interested parties.
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OCVIBE may not be the only area of Anaheim getting a live-work-play upgrade. In early 2027, it is expected that Kroenke Sports & Entertainment will gain Major League Baseball approval for their purchase of the Los Angeles Angels. Kroenke also owns the Los Angeles Rams who play at So-Fi Stadium, the anchor of the 300-acre Hollywood Park live-work-play community.
"We found out recently that the Kroenke family bought the Angels, and they want to do the same thing the Samuelis are doing at OCVIBE, which is a game changer, historic economic development for the city," Waterman said. There are approximately 150 acres surrounding Angel Stadium that could be used for a master-planned community, eliminating surface parking lots.
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