THIS IRVINE CO. STORY BEGINS NOT FROM the gleaming towers near Fashion Island with their enviable views of the Pacific Ocean; nor does it begin on the Irvine Ranch with its massive swaths of undeveloped land; in fact, this Irvine Co. story does not even begin above ground, but instead, in the bowels of 4 Park Place, a class A office tower, located in the Jamboree Center office park, amid steel pipes connected to shimmering machines that stand under the constant static of white noise. There, surrounded by whirring, cold-looking equipment, the heavy machinery thrumming along at a rhythmic pace—the building’s heartbeat, if you will—I expect to find something dangerous, something mysterious, something, perhaps, out of a spine-tingling short story by Edgar Allen Poe.

     Tiptoeing down a concrete stairwell, I walk, looking for the perfect metaphor to Orange County’s largest landowner, and I find it, but not the one I’d expected. I walk beside Danielle Sim, senior vice president of operations for The Irvine Company’s Office Properties Division. A weekend soccer player, tanned, even in the winter, Sim radiates with a California glow. An Irvine Co. engineer walks in front of us, describing the various machines’ properties, their duties and capabilities, his descriptions dulled by the rumblings of the very machines he’s describing. Finally, he stops in front of a machine that takes up one wall. It has a dizzying array of dials and buttons. On one screen are the computer-generated images of the building’s elevators. We watch the individual

compartments race up and down the 20 floors, rising and falling like the chutes and ladders of a Super Mario Bros. video game.
     "Any questions or comments?" The engineer asks.
     Having not heard much of what he’s said and not understood what I had, I ponder the question for a moment. And, finally, I say the only thing that’s come to mind:
     "It awfully clean down here," I say. "I mean, it’s really, really clean."
     I mean clean—there’s nary a puddle, dripping pipe, cigarette butt, soda pop can, nor spider web. There's not even a discarded candy bar wrapper, a coffee cup or a daily newspaper. The level of