Home sweet home
Last month we noted several “best” lists that included Irvine, including the Fiscal Times putting Irvine at the top of its list as the most-fiscally-fit city in the nation, Sunset magazine naming us among “20 Western Dream Towns,” GoodCall.com hailing Irvine as the 9th-safest big city in which to raise a family, and WalletHub.com ranking Irvine 9th in the nation for cities with healthy lifestyles. Now, a new list from GoodCall.com ranks Irvine as one of the best places to invest in buying a home. No great surprise, especially for those who bought in 1972…or 2002… 2008…or even 2016. The only real surprise is that Irvine didn’t rank in the top 10 of the 509 cities the data-driven website looked at. Irvine ranked No. 15 in the “2017 Best Places to Buy a Forever Home” report. The rankings were based on low crime and unemployment, strong educational values, growing population and affordability. As Irvine residents might expect, the city did best in the low crime, education values and home-value growth categories. Affordability issues moved the city down in the overall rankings. Some of the top cities in the rankings are affluent suburbs in Texas, including places named Flower Mound and Sugar Land. This is where we’d write something amusingly deprecating about the Lone Star State, but we don’t want Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who already hates California, to find out. He might start fracking up our fair city.
 
The “Show me” state snags AutoAlert
We have no such qualms about mildly mocking Missouri, which didn’t fare as well as California or Texas in the home investment rankings. Kansas City came in 296th on the list, including a 0 percent return on housing over the past five years. (Irvine values went up 25 percent in the same period.) So good luck to the Irvine employees of AutoAlert being asked to relocate to Kansas City after the local tech company’s owners announced its headquarters are heading there. According to reports, the company was lured from Irvine to the city boosters call the Paris of the Plains (without irony, apparently) thanks to $9 million in tax incentives. No doubt the company will pass those funds on to employees to make up for all the housing appreciation they’ll miss out on, not to mention as a bonus for having to move to Missouri.
 
UCI predicts less crime
Not to keep piling on poor Kansas City (or AutoAlert’s decision to move there), but the city’s overall crime rate is 58.6 per 1,000 population, according to the GoodCall.com data, as compared to Irvine’s rate of 15.5 per 1,000. Irvine’s consistent ranking as the safest city in the U.S. is based on our low violent crime rate, most recently noted as 56 such crimes per 100,000 people in the city. Kansas City’s violent crime rate is a frightening 1,286 per 100,000 people, one of the worst in the nation. Which certainly supports our worldview about living in Irvine: we can all gripe about minor inconveniences, but who wants to move? Especially after looking at UCI’s recently released crime rate forecast, which projects reductions in both violent and property crimes in across much of Southern California for 2017. The predictions are part of the third annual “Crime Report for Southern California,” a publication produced by the Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space & Crime, which is part of UCI’s School of Social Ecology. The report projects violent crime to drop by 21 percent in 82 percent of SoCal cities, and property crime to decrease by 11 percent in 79 percent of cities. As for crime rates from recent years, the study computes the crime rate average over a three-year period, from 2013-2015, which smoothes the random year-to-year fluctuations, according to John Hipp, UCI professor of Criminology, Law & Society. The study calculates the standardized crime rate for the region and sets it at 100. Cities with standardized values above or below 100 have crime rates higher or lower than the regional average. Irvine’s violent crime rate came in at 31.7, well under the standardized rate of 100 in the study. Tustin (48), Newport Beach (103) and Lake Forest (111) fared well, especially compared to the surprising rate in Laguna Beach (291).

Superlative city
The high rankings keep on coming, as Irvine’s national profile and reputation for excellence in a myriad of areas continues to grow (see stories in this issue about our stellar fiscal ranking and Irvine’s healthy lifestyle). Other recent recognition includes Sunset magazine adding Irvine to its list of “20 Western Dream Towns,” along with places like Boise, Provo and Scottsdale. GoodCall.com named Irvine the 9th safest big city in which to raise a family out of the 80 largest cities in the U.S. The data-driven site’s analysts looked at four metrics: crime rate, vehicle safety, air quality and educational attainment. Irvine ranked No. 1 for both high school- and college-education rates and No. 1 for lowest crime rate, while vehicle safety rate was 9th. Irvine likely would have been No. 1 overall on the list but for less-than-stellar air quality: Irvine’s ranking was a sort-of-scary #72. (goodcall.com/data-center/safest-cities-raise-family-2017) Locally, the editor of the OC Weekly included “The Idea of Irvine as Dull” in his story about “people, businesses, stereotypes and ideas that held us down for too long, influenced us negatively and are now going the way of Sears, letting Orange County become a better place.” The amusing blurb about Irvine cited the city’s diverse population, shopping and dining choices, while ending with this line: “A friend who has been away from OC for about 15 years put it best when he recently returned to UC Irvine: ‘What the hell happened to Irvine? THANK GOD.’”
 
Mayoral moment
Irvine’s new mayor, Donald Wagner, will give his opinion about Irvine’s status in his State of the City Address at the Irvine Civic Center on Feb. 14. The Valentine’s Day date should be apropos, as there’s a lot to love about living in Irvine. If his first few city council sessions are an example, we expect Wagner’s speech to be informative, engaging and probably funny at times, while still laying out the many challenges facing the city (maybe we need to take a look at those air quality numbers, for one). The event begins with a reception at 5 p.m., followed by the mayor’s address at 6 p.m. The event is open to the public. Call 949.724.6077 for more information.
 
Borrowing from Brea
We don’t get up to Brea a lot. Though we do enjoy the revitalized downtown in the city, when TAPS Fish House and Brewery opened in Irvine a year and a half ago there was one less reason to make the trek up the 57 Freeway. With the recent news that Cha Cha’s Latin Kitchen will join TAPS at the Irvine Marketplace near Irvine Ave., replacing IHOP, we’ll have another of Brea’s best restaurants in our city. Cha Cha’s features Mexican and Latin American cooking in a contemporary style (don’t miss the Guajillo Braised Short Rib Enchiladas served open-faced with Pasilla chiles), and is well known for its happening Happy Hour, including well-made Margaritas featuring fresh juices and house-made infusions. Now if we could only get Lillie’s Q (the gourmet barbecue restaurant that’s currently closed due to construction) to move to Irvine, we’d truly have the best of Brea.