The Fence Around Mile Square Park Isn't Temporary. It's Going to Outlast Two More Springs.

If you've walked, jogged, or biked the perimeter of Mile Square Regional Park anytime in the last two years, you've seen it: a chain-link fence running along a long stretch of what used to be fairway, cutting off close to a third of the park's acreage from the paths everyone still uses. Most people who pass it assume it's routine, a golf course getting a facelift, something that wraps up in a season or two.

It doesn't. The 93 acres behind that fence went dark on September 23, 2024, and Orange County Parks' own construction page lists spring 2027 as the anticipated finish. That's not a typo and it's not a delay. It's the schedule, and it means the fence will have stood for roughly two and a half years by the time anyone walks through it again.

The Back Nine That Isn't Coming Back

The land behind the fence used to belong to Mile Square Golf Course, the private operator that has run golf at the park since 1969. What's happening to it isn't a renovation of that course. It's the permanent end of eighteen of its holes.

The county and the golf operator renegotiated their lease back in 2018, and the amendment they signed required Mile Square Golf Course to hand back at least 85 acres to county control by January 31, 2021. A follow-up amendment in 2019 drew the actual boundary, landing on the roughly 93-acre expansion area that's fenced off today. That's the mechanism most park visitors never hear about: the fence isn't there because a construction crew needed room to work around an active course. It's there because the course itself gave up that ground, permanently, as a condition of staying open on the acreage it kept.

Once the county had the land back, the Board of Supervisors approved a full Master Plan for the whole 607-acre park in July 2021, built with help from landscape architecture firm EPTDESIGN after a multi-year public process that included community workshops and a five-mile radius needs assessment. Construction on the first phase, mostly lake reconstruction and path paving, started in March 2022 and wrapped in November 2023, reopening to the public that same month. Phase 2, the part currently fenced off, is the bigger lift.

What's Actually Going In

The list of what replaces those eighteen holes is longer than most people expect from a park expansion, and it's worth knowing before spring 2027 arrives and residents are wondering what changed overnight. According to the county's own Phase 2 project page, the 93 acres will hold:

• An amphitheater
• A Great Meadow, the expansion's open lawn centerpiece
• A children's adventure play area
• A multi-use field
• A new primary vehicular road, with associated parking
• A restroom building

That's on top of the lake work and path improvements already delivered in Phase 1. None of it is a small add-on to the existing park. It's a second park, built inside the first one, on ground that spent five decades as a golf course before anyone thought to ask what else it could be.

Two Years Fenced, One More to Go

Here's the part that catches people off guard when they do the math. The closure started in September 2024. A child who was starting kindergarten when the fence went up will be finishing second grade by the time the amphitheater and Great Meadow open. That's not a criticism of the county's pace. Design-build projects of this size, on land that used to be an active golf lease with its own drainage and turf systems, take time to convert responsibly. But it does mean the mental shortcut most residents use, "it'll probably open by next summer," has been wrong for two summers running and will be wrong for a third.

The county's project notice includes a line that's easy to skim past: the spring 2027 target is subject to change due to weather or other factors. That's standard language for a public works timeline, but it's worth taking at face value here rather than assuming the county is simply being cautious. A project that already runs two and a half years from closure to reopening has less schedule slack to give away than a shorter one would.

The Park Nobody Notices Is Closed

None of this means Mile Square has been unusable. The two golf courses that survived the 2018 lease amendment, Mile Square Golf Course and the David L. Baker Golf Course, are both still open and playable. So is the archery range, the fishing lakes, the nature area, and the leash-required dog walking paths that wrap the park's perimeter. Pickleball and tennis courts on the recreation side haven't missed a beat.

If anything, the city has leaned into keeping the open two-thirds of the park active while the fenced third does its slow work. Mayor Jim Cunneen's quarterly Walk a Mile with the Mayor series is now on its third edition, with the September 19 walk meeting at the Fountain Valley Recreation Center at 16400 Brookhurst Street. It's a genuinely informal event, part of what the city calls its Fitness Valley initiative, and it puts residents on a casual stroll alongside the mayor, Police Chief Craig Heredia, Fire Chief Chris Nigg, and City Manager Maggie Le. No sign-up required. It's the kind of civic texture that only shows up if you're paying attention to what's actually happening in the neighborhood rather than what a park map says should be there.

The rest of the park's fall calendar didn't wait on construction either. The Fountain Valley Chamber of Commerce ran its 56th Annual Fall Festival on September 7, and the 30th Original Lobster Festival took over the Recreation Center and Sports Park grounds September 11 through 13 with fresh Maine lobster flown in daily and a full weekend of live music. Both events happened on the city-run side of the property, the side that was never part of the golf course conversion, which is a small but real reminder that the fenced 93 acres is a fraction of Mile Square, not the whole park holding its breath.

Why This Took Sixty Years to Get Here

The longer arc explains why nobody should expect this kind of change to move fast. Mile Square's first 85 acres opened in 1970 on land the county leased from the Navy after its use as a World War II airfield. The park grew in phases through the 1970s and 80s, added a second golf course in 1999, and didn't start giving any of that golf acreage back until a 2018 lease renegotiation set the terms. From that renegotiation to a fenced construction site took about six years. From fenced construction site to an open amphitheater and meadow will take about two and a half more.

That's the pattern worth understanding if you live near the park and want a realistic sense of what's coming rather than a hopeful guess. Fountain Valley doesn't do fast civic change. It does deliberate, publicly-vetted, multi-year change, and the payoff, when it lands, tends to be substantial rather than incremental. The Great Meadow and amphitheater will be worth the wait. They just won't be worth holding your breath for.

If you're the kind of Fountain Valley resident who tracks what's happening at the park down to the lease amendment, you're exactly the kind of neighbor Mike Doyle likes to talk to, whether the conversation is about a fence line or a floor plan. Get your instant home valuation anytime to see what the rest of the neighborhood has been up to while that meadow grows in.