"An investment in Anaheim and the future of Orange County as a global destination for live entertainment." That's how Bill Foltz, chief executive of OC Sports & Entertainment, described the billion-dollar renovation now underway at Honda Center. It's the kind of line that sounds like it belongs to a groundbreaking ceremony, something for a future ribbon cutting. Except the work he's describing already started. If you've bought a ticket to a Ducks game this season, you've walked through part of it.
Most of what gets written about OCVibe treats it as a single future event: a 100-acre district rising around Honda Center, opening sometime after the puck drops on a new era. That framing misses the more useful fact for anyone who actually lives near the Platinum Triangle. There are two separate clocks running on this project, and only one of them says 2027.
The Renovation You're Already Standing In
Honda Center Encore is the name for the arena's own transformation, and it launched in the fall of 2024, rolling out in pieces while the building stays open for every game and concert. Draft Picks opened at Section 437 in November 2025. By December 2025, four new food concepts had landed on the Upper Level: Feather & Flame, El Patito, Slapshot Grill, and Anaheim Pizza Co. Construction is underway on a new premium all-inclusive club at the east end of the Columbia Bank Club Level, with an update to the longstanding Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Club to follow. Every restroom in the building is being redesigned, section by section.
This past summer brought more of it: new bar spaces at the West Entrance and near Section 415, plus new restrooms on the Plaza Level. A club-level bar near Sections 319 through 321 is next on the list, and Sweet Spot was slated to return at Section 228 by spring 2026. Brewery X Biergarten, the 15,000-square-foot indoor-outdoor space fans have used for years, has been closed since earlier this year while the South Entrance redevelopment happens around it.
That South Entrance is the visible spine of the project: a new five-story addition with escalators, expanded gathering space, and a digital display built for outdoor viewing parties. Three new parking garages are adding more than 6,000 stalls. None of this is theoretical. It's why your last visit to the arena might have felt like a partially finished building, because it is one, on purpose, incrementally, through the end of 2027.
That timeline matters beyond hockey season. Honda Center is set to host Olympic volleyball during the 2028 Los Angeles Games, which is part of why the Samueli family structured the renovation to finish in phases rather than close the building for a year.
The Other Clock: What's Rising Next Door
Katella Commons and the district's new concert hall are a separate project on a separate schedule, and as of a hard-hat tour in late July 2026, the target for that first phase is March 2027. Touring the still-unfinished 5,000-seat concert hall designed by Populous, the same architecture firm behind the Sphere, reporters found roughly 1,700 balcony seats already in place. The leafy plaza meant to connect the concert hall to Katella Commons was, at that same July visit, still a dirt pile, with plans for a 140-by-30-foot screen that will broadcast live from both venues at once.
Katella Commons itself is a 50,000-square-foot, two-story market hall built around 21 kitchens. The roster reads like a cross-section of Southern California's current food scene: Amiga Amore, Burritos La Palma, Evil Cooks, Manaao Thai Comfort Food, and Darkroom Restaurant and Wine Bar were among the first announced, followed by five more concepts in August, including Don Churros Gomez, MFK | Modern Filipino Kitchen, Mojo, Pull & Roll, and Gelato Paradiso. Los Angeles chef Roy Choi is bringing his restaurant Best Friend into the mix. The bar program includes Bar Bacchia, a wine cave-styled tasting room, Vesper Lounge, and Barrel Bar, styled after a European café that serves coffee by morning and cocktails by night.
OCVibe senior vice president Scott Frick explained the leasing structure to Commercial Observer: ownership is funding the buildout down to the kitchen equipment, so operators can "bring in your own knives and we'll turn on the menu boards." The stated goal is a seven-day-a-week customer base, not a district that only comes alive on game nights.
The Weave, a six-story mass-timber office building and the first of its kind in Orange County, is also targeting a 2027 opening alongside Urban Park and the district's South Plaza.
The Price Tag Grew While Nobody Was Watching
Anaheim City Council approved OCVibe as a $4 billion project back in October 2022. By the time reporters got their July 2026 look inside the concert hall, outlets were describing it as a $5 billion commitment. That billion-dollar jump between announcement and construction is worth sitting with, because it tracks with everything else about the plan getting bigger rather than smaller. Coverage from 2025 described roughly 1,500 homes in the full buildout. As of the August 2026 reporting, that figure had grown to more than 2,500 residences, alongside more than 35 dining concepts and three entertainment venues once complete. Full buildout is now targeted for 2033, and the Golden Bear, a Huntington Beach nightclub that closed in 1986, is slated to reopen inside the district in 2029.
Here's the two-clock version laid out plainly:
| Timeframe | What's changing |
|---|---|
| Already underway (2025-2026 season) | Honda Center Encore: new concession concepts, South Entrance construction, parking garage additions, restroom redesigns |
| March 2027 | Katella Commons (21 kitchens), OCVibe concert hall, The Weave office building, Urban Park, South Plaza |
| 2029 | Golden Bear nightclub reopens |
| 2033 | Full 100-acre buildout: 2,500+ residences, 35+ dining concepts, 20 acres of parks and plazas |
A Practical Note for Anyone Already Dealing With the Construction
If parking near Honda Center has felt tighter this year, there's a workaround worth knowing about. The ARTIC train station sits directly across Katella Avenue from the development, less than a ten-minute walk from the platform to the heart of the district. A Metrolink ride from Downtown Los Angeles's Union Station runs about 45 minutes and costs around $8.75, though return Metrolink service stops after rush hour, so a same-day round trip means catching an Amtrak train back, at roughly $16, before just after 11 p.m. It's not a solution for every trip, but for anyone already routing around construction detours this season, it's one more option than the arena's own website tends to mention.
The district's park planning leans on that same idea of connection over car dependence. Meadow Park is designed to reflect the historic path of the Santa Ana River before it was channelized, and the full network will include three miles of interconnected trails for walking, jogging, and cycling, threading between the residential buildings, dining, and entertainment venues once everything opens.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The mistake is treating OCVibe as a single future event you can safely ignore until 2027. The renovation already reshaping Honda Center is not a preview or a teaser. It's the arena you're sitting in tonight, mid-transformation, with more changes landing through the rest of this season and into next year. The bigger district next door is real too, and its price tag and scope have both grown since the plans were first approved. But the part of this story that's actually happening right now, under your seat, deserves as much attention as the renderings of a market hall that won't open its doors for another six months.
For Anaheim residents who've watched this corner of the Platinum Triangle change block by block, that distinction between what's already different and what's still coming is the kind of detail that matters when you're deciding how to plan around this construction for the next year, or when you're simply trying to figure out where to park for the next game.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property near the district, or just want a clearer read on how Anaheim's growth corridors are shaping up, Jesse Halberstadt is worth a conversation. Let's Connect.
