"Orange Riviera"

By Frank Trippett

Viewed from hip Los Angeles, Orange County has sometimes seemed a quaint appendage sprawling southward down the Pacific Coast, a pleasant afterthought with an odd weakness for white shoes and alarmists of the John Birch Society stripe. To the larger world, the county still summons up images of citrus groves and Disneyland, planned communities and the young Richard Nixon, hard- core conservatism and the late John Wayne. But today Orange County is undergoing a dramatic change, exploding with new wealth. Its economic output has more than tripled in a decade, and its population since 1970 has jumped by 50%, to 2.1 million. The county's coastal area has transformed itself into a highenergy, high-rolling, high-living megalopolis, creating an "Orange Riviera" brimming with glamour and glitz.

From the gold-rush camps and Hollywood to the flower children and Silicon Valley, California has long been the place where the newest manifestations of the American dream first sprouted. In Orange County, the dream seems to be driven by the lure of both success and excess. With 42 miles of beckoning oceanfront, this California-style Riviera is a 38-sq.-mi. wedge of land stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Santa Ana Mountains and harboring the thriving towns of Newport Beach (pop. 67,000), Costa Mesa (88,000) and Irvine (89,000). It includes a constellation of some 700 high-tech firms -- making Orange the U.S.'s fifth largest high-tech complex. Its economic output, according to Economist James Doti, is expected to reach about $50 billion this year, vs. $13.5 billion in 1975. The county's economy has grown twice as fast as the nation's in the 1980s. Last year alone, some 50,000 new jobs were created.

The county's coast oozes affluence. Atrium Court, part of Newport Beach's Fashion Island mall, is a marble-floored enclave of jewelry and apparel shops, with an entire ground level given over to gourmet markets and eateries -- caviar and quail to go. Matrons browse among $11,000 silk dresses and $5,000 crocodile handbags in the boutiques of Clothier Amen Wardy, an ex-Texan who is happy to send clients a "clothesmobile" staffed with a fitter. South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is equally posh. Yachts and other pleasure craft are so numerous that dock space in Newport Beach's harbor rents for as much as $300 a month for a 30-footer. Local Mercedes Dealer Jim Slemons has doubled his business in four years and stocks eight acres of cars. In a branch of his Beverly Hills boutique, Clothier Alan Austin reflects on this Riviera's conspicuous consumers: "They have the money, and they're not afraid to spend it."

Orange's once easy-stepping social life has become a gilded fandango. Says Social Lioness Floss Schumacher, wife of retired Global Van Lines Chairman Edward Schumacher: "People are suddenly clamoring for white tie and tails." September will bring the opening of a 3,000-seat arts center in Costa Mesa, financed entirely by $71 million in donations.

Growth has jolted Orange's traditional complacency. Bill Hamilton, who went home to California to retire but instead opened a seafood restaurant in Orange, compares the mood to "gold-rush fever." Says Stockbroker Trevor Spruston: "The atmosphere challenges everyone's drive." It also encourages second starts, says Alan Rypinski. He made one fortune producing a protective coating for vinyl and rubber called Armor All, stumbled financially with an auto boutique and a fast-food spaghetti business, and is now trying to pile up another bundle selling a product that removes wrinkles from fabric. Says Rypinski: "It's pretty easy to recover. There's so much going on."

< The Orange Riviera's basic appeal is still its natural assets: gorgeous beaches, wooded hills, balmy climate. Real Estate Investor Leo Gugasian hardly needs to explain his fondness for the area: his office is aboard his three- bedroom yacht. Says he: "The salt air and relaxed pace make me think better." Another amenity: a lower rate of serious crime, 37% below Los Angeles' last year.

Growth has brought some problems. Middle-class housing is scarce and prices are generally high: the average for a three-bedroom tract house in Newport Beach is $300,000. Traffic is approaching the nightmare stage. The 405 Freeway through Irvine often looks like a parking lot. Worse, a hint of L.A. -- smog -- sometimes hangs over the Santa Ana Mountains.

Yet the county has remained remarkably free of social stress. The relative wealth of the residents (median income: $44,000) is one reason. The population is comparatively homogeneous. Unemployment, at 4%, is nearly 3 points below the national average. Orange remains solidly Republican, but the conservatism is less shrill nowadays: Birch Society types no longer command center stage.

The future seems as bright as the present. Wells Fargo Bank last month predicted that Orange would grow faster than California as a whole for the next 15 years. The county anticipates that it will develop 306,000 new jobs by 2000. "There is," says Venture Capitalist Charles Martin, "a great feeling of destiny here."

With reporting by Richard Woodbury/Newport Beach