For years, the pitch for buying in Irvine's Great Park Neighborhoods came with a qualifier: the retail is coming. A grocery store within walking distance, museums, a concert venue — all on the master plan, all a few years out. Residents who bought in 2017 heard it. Residents who bought in 2021 heard it again. One homeowner, quoted in the OC Register, put it plainly: "We bought into that expectation." The answer, in the meantime, was a drive to Woodbury Town Center — which those same residents have described as congested.
That expectation is about to be met. Not because one thing is finally happening, but because three separate projects, each years in the making, are hitting construction milestones in the same calendar year. By the time 2026 closes, this neighborhood looks meaningfully different from the one those early buyers moved into.
Here is what is actually being built, who is building it, and when it opens.
The Canopy: Your Grocery Store Has a Name
The anchor tenant for The Canopy is T&T Supermarket, an Asian grocery chain that opened its first U.S. location in 2023. The choice is not incidental. It reflects the character of the community the neighborhood actually contains, not a generic placeholder to check a box.
The Canopy sits at the corner of Bosque and Great Park Boulevard, spans 90,000 sq ft, and is developed by Almquist, the same firm behind Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton and the upcoming River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano. The developer's reputation is built on chef-driven restaurant mixes and curated retail, not commodity strip centers. The first confirmed food tenant beyond the grocery anchor is In-N-Out Burger. A second dining component, Hangar 10, will occupy a former WWII military hangar on-site being converted into additional restaurant and retail space.
The 12-acre project broke ground in April 2025 and is targeting a late-2026 opening. The city held a community meeting at the construction site on March 2, 2026, giving residents an up-close look at the footprint already taking shape. City Manager Oliver Chi has described the goal as "a space that feels like a community center where you can spend the entire day."
That framing matters. The Canopy sits adjacent to Great Park Live, which means a concert night and a grocery run can share a parking lot. That adjacency was not accidental — it is designed to make both destinations more useful to the people who live nearby.
The Cultural Terrace: Three Institutions, One Campus
Two blocks south of the Sports Complex, on 45 acres that were graded and prepared in 2024, the Cultural Terrace is taking shape. When complete, it will hold 200,000 sq ft of museum, educational, and performing arts space across three institutions — each a full relocation and expansion, not a satellite outpost.
OC Music & Dance
Orange County Music & Dance is building an 85,000 sq ft campus with private teaching studios, rehearsal rooms, and a 500-seat theater shared with community ensembles, including the Pacific Symphony. The school has operated in Irvine since 2017 and is expanding its scholarship endowment to $5 million specifically to keep pace with the enrollment growth the new space enables. Construction began January 2025, with a fall 2026 completion target.
Pretend City Children's Museum
Pretend City is relocating from its current 27,000 sq ft facility at 29 Hubble, which has been at capacity — with visitors waiting in line to get in. Its new Cultural Terrace home will be substantially larger and will include a restaurant open to the general public, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Target opening: 2027.
Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum
The Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum is a $63 million project that broke ground in fall 2024 and is targeting early 2027. It will house military aircraft previously stationed at the former El Toro Marine base — the same base whose 1999 closure created the land the Great Park now occupies. Alongside the new museum, the original air control tower, whose exterior bull mascot was illustrated by Walt Disney, was purchased from the FAA in 2025 and is being evaluated for restoration as a climbable historical exhibit.
These three institutions share a campus, not just a zip code. About 1,000 parking spaces are planned for the Cultural Terrace, with connected pathways designed so a family parks once and moves between a children's museum, a performing arts rehearsal space, and a military aviation collection in the same visit.
Great Park Live: Already Running, Now Larger
While The Canopy and Cultural Terrace are under construction, Great Park Live is already operating — and 2026 is its biggest year yet. On February 6, 2026, PSQ Productions announced a capacity expansion to 10,000 guests, alongside a full concert calendar running through summer. The confirmed 2026 lineup includes the Holo Holo Music Festival on April 18, Billy Currington on May 8, the I Love the 90's Tour on March 21, and the OC Super Show on March 14.
The park's existing footprint already gives residents somewhere to be while the larger projects finish. The Great Park Balloon, carousel, 1.5 miles of trails through the Bosque area, and the Palm Court Arts Complex are open now. The Great Park Gallery opened three new solo exhibitions on January 25 featuring work by Daniela García Hamilton, Kristina Rose Baker, and Vonn Sumner. Jazz in the Palm Court returns on April 11.
The Layover, currently the only on-site eatery inside the park, puts the scale of The Canopy in sharper relief. The park already draws over 6 million visits per year. The framework plan targets tripling that number at full buildout. The retail and dining infrastructure arriving in late 2026 is designed to serve a park that is already heavily used — not a park waiting for visitors to show up.
What 2026 Starts
What opens this year is the first phase of a plan that runs through 2029. After The Canopy and the Cultural Terrace, the next major milestones include a permanent amphitheater replacing the current Great Park Live setup, two lakes covering a combined 35 acres, and the Great Meadow. The total public and private investment in the Great Park exceeds $1 billion.
The Marine Way extension and undercrossing — a city infrastructure project designed to improve access and traffic flow around the park — is advancing in parallel with the construction above ground.
Residents who bought in the Great Park Neighborhoods early did so knowing the park was unfinished. They accepted the trade-off. What 2026 represents is the point where the most consequential gap — a grocery store within walking distance, cultural programming worth a Saturday, and a concert venue that holds 10,000 people — closes. The neighborhood that was sold on a master plan is becoming the neighborhood on the master plan.
Irene and Ricky Zhang Real Estate Group has been active in the Great Park Neighborhoods throughout this entire buildout. If you want to understand what these changes mean for your home's value or your options as a seller in this market, we are glad to walk through the specifics with you. Schedule a free listing consultation and let's look at the numbers together.
