Tustin, CA

Tustin's two most legible centers work at very different scales. Old Town occupies compact blocks around Main Street and El Camino Real, where nineteenth-century buildings hold shops, restaurants, services, and a weekly market. Southeast of that core, Tustin Legacy covers roughly 1,600 acres of the former Marine Corps air station in Tustin, plus adjoining land in Irvine. New housing, schools, parks, offices, and retail share the old base with undeveloped parcels and the surviving South Hangar. About 500 acres remained available as the city developed new framework concepts for the hangar area in 2026. The North Hangar's remnants were being demolished after the 2023 fire; the Navy-owned South Hangar was still under evaluation, not open for routine rental. The hangars record a nationally unusual military landscape.

ATTROrange County Archives from Orange County, California, United States of America / CC BY 2.0

The Navy established a lighter-than-air station for coastal patrols in 1942. Its blimp force grew from one aircraft to twelve, and two immense wooden hangars were completed in 1943. Each stood more than 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and roughly seventeen stories high. Reactivated in 1951, the installation became the first United States military airfield devoted solely to helicopter operations and later supported Marine training. It closed in 1999. A November 2023 fire almost entirely destroyed the North Hangar, leaving the South Hangar as the principal surviving structure. Environmental, structural, fire-protection, ownership, and reuse questions keep the former base at the center of current civic decisions. The older town developed through water and agriculture.

ATTRNandaro / CC BY-SA 4.0

Artesian wells helped make land around Red Hill productive, and Columbus Tustin and a partner purchased 1,300 acres in 1868. Citrus later drove local farming; incorporation followed in 1927, and postwar subdivisions replaced most groves. Work is now distributed among retail and professional services, schools, health care, industrial sites, and newer offices at Tustin Legacy. FLIGHT, completed on 17 acres in 2019, provides nearly 372,000 square feet of office space around a conference center, outdoor areas, and the Mess Hall food venue. Its tenants include technology, software, consumer-products, and aerospace firms. Completed workplaces sit beside development parcels, making construction and reuse part of the daily landscape southeast of Old Town. The two centers host different public routines. Old Town's historic blocks support Saturday farmers markets, the annual Street Fair and Chili Cook-Off, and the Sunset Market on third Thursdays from May through September 2026.

ATTRNandaro / CC BY-SA 3.0

At Tustin Legacy, Veterans Sports Park combines fields and courts with a memorial to those who lived or served at the former air station. The first phase of Legacy Park occupies another 26 acres and is intended to become part of a longer connection toward the Metrolink station as later phases are built. An Old Town street fair unfolds beside the city's surviving early storefronts; league games and office lunches at Legacy occur on ground once organized for blimps and helicopters. Between them, the South Hangar rises over a redevelopment district whose final form remains unsettled.