Great Park Neighborhoods

Yes, if you want new construction. The eight districts were built since 2013 on the former El Toro air base. You can buy a new townhome, condo or house, with three K-8 schools and Portola High inside the district. The Orange County Great Park sits next door with its sports complex, stadium, ice arena, and water park. The cost comes in layers: association dues plus the CFD 2013-3 special tax. That tax can rise up to 2 percent a year and continues in reduced form after the bonds are repaid. Understand that number before comparing prices.

Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, the 4,682-acre West Coast home of Marine aviation, commissioned in March 1943 and closed on July 2, 1999. The county wanted a commercial airport on the runways. Orange County voters rejected that on March 5, 2002 by passing Measure W. Irvine annexed the land in 2003, and a Lennar-led group bought the base at auction in 2005 for about $650 million. The Great Park Balloon opened in 2007 and the first homes, in Pavilion Park, in September 2013.

Community Facilities District 2013-3 is the Mello-Roos district the City of Irvine and Heritage Fields El Toro formed in 2013. It finances the backbone streets, utilities, storm drains, parks, and trails, plus Great Park development and maintenance. Homeowners pay a special tax on the property bill that can increase up to 2 percent a year. The city says the bonds typically take 40 years to repay, after which the charge drops by roughly 65 to 82 percent and the remainder continues in perpetuity for maintenance. The amount varies by parcel, so read the CFD disclosure for the specific home.

Irvine Unified School District, with four campuses inside the district. Beacon Park School (K-8) and Portola High opened in 2016, Cadence Park School (K-8) in 2018, and Solis Park School (K-8) in 2022. Portola High sits on 42 acres at 1001 Cadence and enrolled 2,503 students in 2023-24. Boundaries have moved as each district opened, so check the address in IUSD's School Locator.

More than 500 acres are open, with about 300 more in the next phase toward about 1,300 acres. The 175-acre sports complex holds fields, courts, and Championship Soccer Stadium, a 5,500-seat home for Orange County SC since 2017. Great Park Ice & FivePoint Arena opened four ice sheets in December 2018, Wild Rivers water park opened in July 2022, and Great Park Live, a temporary 5,000-capacity amphitheater, opened in June 2024. The Palm Court Arts Complex, Hangar 244, and the orange balloon, flying since 2007, round it out. Coming next are 22 acres of lakes, a permanent amphitheater, and the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, planned to open in spring 2027.

About $700,000 to $4.2 million as of September 2026. On September 25, 2026 about 120 homes were listed: condos from $696,000 to $2.86 million, a few townhomes at $1.31 million to $1.65 million, and houses from $1.3 million to $4.18 million, with a median house ask near $2.6 million. Most showed association dues of about $240 a month, and every home also pays the CFD 2013-3 special tax. Builder releases nearby set the reference for resale prices.

Yes. Builders sold 56 new homes in the Great Park in the second quarter of 2026, according to FivePoint's quarterly results, and in the same quarter FivePoint's Great Park venture sold 17.7 acres planned for senior living. The plan allows up to 10,500 homesites, and more than 8,000 had sold by May 2024. That means resale sellers compete with new inventory a few streets away, so I compare every resale with the nearest builder release before we make an offer.

Yes, in the groundwater far below the neighborhoods, and it's under active cleanup. The EPA put the base on its Superfund National Priorities List in 1990, and a plume of the solvent TCE about one mile by three miles extends off the base, about 150 feet deep beneath the base and 300 to 700 feet deep under the surrounding community. The Irvine Ranch Water District has treated it since January 2007 in a project expected to take about 40 years, and it uses the cleaned water only for irrigation and other non-drinking purposes. IRWD reports no drinking-water wells in the plume and says it has never detected TCE in the drinking water it serves.

Mostly no. On the 2025 Fire Hazard Severity Zone map Irvine adopted effective July 23, 2025, 70 of the 78 points we checked across the districts came back outside any zone. The exceptions sit on the east side near Irvine Boulevard and the Portola High campus, where streets such as Merit, Tank and Sash came back Very High, which goes on the natural hazard disclosure, and a few blocks Moderate. None of the 34 points we checked on the state's seismic hazard maps fell in a landslide or liquefaction zone, and FEMA maps the sampled streets as Zone X, minimal flood hazard.

The Irvine Spectrum is about 2.5 miles south in a straight line and about 5 miles by road from Cadence Park, UC Irvine about 11 miles by road and John Wayne Airport about 13. The Irvine Metrolink station on Barranca Parkway is about 4.6 miles by road, and downtown Los Angeles about 44. The 5 and the 133 toll road run along the district's west side, with Irvine Boulevard and Sand Canyon Avenue across it. Traffic on the 5 decides most drive times, so try a commute at the hour you'd make it.

The Great Park Neighborhoods sit on the flat former air base, and Portola Springs climbs the foothills under Loma Ridge, though both are newer Irvine villages in ZIP 92618. The Great Park districts, built since 2013, pay the city's CFD 2013-3 special tax, have three K-8 schools and Portola High inside, and border a park planned at about 1,300 acres. Portola Springs, begun in 2006, pays an Irvine Unified school CFD plus a city reassessment district, has two elementary schools of its own, and backs onto the Irvine Ranch Open Space. Most of Portola Springs is a Very High fire hazard zone on the 2025 map while most of the Great Park is outside any zone, so compare insurance quotes before you choose.

Read the Portola Springs guide

Yes. The CFD 2013-3 disclosure is the page to understand before you buy here, and I'll go through it with you line by line in Russian, along with the association papers. For a family moving from overseas, I also confirm which K-8 campus the address feeds.