Irvine Spectrum

The Crazy Horse Steak House certainly looks a lot less crazy in its posh new Irvine Spectrum digs than it did in its faux-western home alongside the Costa Mesa Freeway in Santa Ana.

The champagne flowed and live fish graced the lobby at pre-opening events for the new 3-D Imax theater in the Irvine Spectrum this week. Outside, workers scrambled to finish a new parking lot. The real test will come Friday, however.

House of Blues plans to open one of its restaurant-nightclubs in Orange County, prompting the operator of the competing Coach House and Galaxy clubs to promise an all-out entertainment war. The West Hollywood-based entertainment chain has been negotiating with the Irvine Co. to locate the club at the Irvine Spectrum Center. No deal has been reached, officials of both companies said, and the club could wind up somewhere else.

What started out as a bean field 13 years ago has sprouted into one of the country's premier technology addresses. The 3,600-acre Irvine Spectrum emerged relatively unscathed from the California recession two years ago and has been growing at breakneck speed ever since. All told, 2,200 companies employing more than 36,000 people now make their home in the business community cradled in the convergence of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways.

For the first time in five years, new construction is pending at Irvine Spectrum--a signal that Orange County's ailing commercial real estate market is on the mend. Work is scheduled to begin in December on the first phase of an office and industrial development projected to cost $52 million. The first building will accommodate an expansion by Beech Street Corp., a managed-health-care provider already based at the Spectrum, Irvine Co.'s landmark 3,600-acre business park.

It's one of Garth Brooks' favorite Southern California hangouts. It's where Buck Owens made a dramatic comeback after cancer surgery, and where Merle Haggard renounced his retirement. And it's where Waylon Jennings almost left his heart. It's the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana, which evolved from a slightly kitschy Old West-themed red-meat emporium in a nondescript business park into one of the nation's most prestigious and beloved country-music showcases.

If the really big picture simply isn't big enough, hang onto your seats, because big-screen king Imax is bringing the West Coast's first 3-D sight-and-sound theater to Orange County. The six-story screen will open in late November at the Edwards Theatres complex in the Irvine Spectrum Entertainment Center, a $50-million, Moroccan-themed entertainment, restaurant and retail complex now under construction near the El Toro Y.

Western Digital Corp., the world's third-largest maker of computer disk drives, said Monday that it will leave its landmark high-rise headquarters in the heart of the Irvine Spectrum for a new campus-style office park in Lake Forest. The company estimates that it will save as much as 65% annually on facilities costs in the new location and recoup the costs of the move in four months. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., once the undisputed titan of the surf wear industry, filed a plan Monday to emerge from bankruptcy and pay off all of its debts. Under the plan, which must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, OP would distribute 75% of its profit to its two secured creditors and the remaining 25% to unsecured creditors until it is debt-free. At that rate, the company estimates, the secured creditors--Republic Factors Corp.