LPA Design Studios, Orange County’s largest architectural firm by billings, is coming off one of its biggest projects yet—the completion of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian’s $1.2 billion Sun Family Campus—with more major work on the way.

The firm was chosen as the lead architect of the six-building campus, which is being capped by four facilities dedicated to women’s health and cancer and digestive health opening next month. The facilities feature outdoor courtyards designed by LPA to bring natural light and open air into patient areas.

“Hoag is a huge project, so that has been something we’ve been working toward,” Chief Executive Wendy Rogers told the Business Journal. “For the team and for us all to see that come to fruition is tremendous.”

LPA is now turning its attention to two projects at Irvine’s $1.1 billion Great Park development: the upcoming Asian American Museum and the relocation of nonprofit Pretend City Children’s Museum.

Irvine-based LPA is the largest architectural firm in the region with $92.7 million in local billings, according to the Business Journal’s annual list of architectural firms (see page 20).

The firm, which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, has seven offices in California and Texas.

The firm’s busy project pipeline has also earned national recognition with LPA receiving the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) 2025 Architecture Firm Award, the industry’s highest honor, for its integrated model that brings multiple design disciplines and engineering under one roof.

“I think the integrated firm makes a difference, but also the fact that we have eight different practice areas,” Rogers said.

Some of LPA’s strongest markets have been commercial and workplace projects, along with healthcare, a sector the firm entered about a decade ago.

Rising Costs Put Great Park Projects on Hold
The Asian American Museum and Pretend City Children’s Museum will be located at the Cultural Terrace area of the Great Park, home to a collection of new museums and a renovated community events center.

Both projects are currently on hold, according to Rogers, who cited escalating construction costs as a significant hurdle for nonprofits undertaking major projects.

“It’s a challenging time to be putting projects together,” Rogers said. “For a lot of nonprofits, that puts an additional burden on something that was already a really big lift.”
Initially greenlit by the City of Irvine in 2024, the Asian American Museum aims to preserve and share Asian American history and culture in a county with more than 750,000 Asian Americans.

The 220,000-square-foot museum will include 94,000 square feet of potential exhibition space, along with a 400-seat auditorium and a performance venue and food hall featuring a range of Asian cuisines.

The Cultural Terrace is also slated to become the new home of Pretend City, whose current 28,000-square-foot location in Irvine has reached capacity, prompting the nonprofit to look for more space in the past several years.

Pretend City is moving from a warehouse to a 72,000-square-foot facility at the Great Park, giving the children’s museum more room for customized learning spaces.

Pretend City will bring its interactive play concept to the new facility, creating a child-sized city fit with a post office, doctor’s office and café. Construction is expected to begin in October, with groundbreaking planned for winter 2026-27 and completion anticipated in spring 2028, according to LPA.

The Cultural Terrace’s museum lineup will also include the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, adding to aviation history in Orange County. The $63 million facility is slated to open in 2027 and will house several military planes that were previously stationed at the El Toro base.

Nonprofit performing arts school Orange County Music & Dance had intended to relocate to the Great Park for more space, but abandoned the plans due to unforeseen delays and incurring debt. In June, the nonprofit announced a $10.8 million purchase of a 25,000-square-foot building for use as a second campus, along with the appointment of OCSA founder Ralph Opacic as CEO after Douglas Freeman stepped down.

LPA Designs New Middle School,
Gym For Sage Hill School
Another recently completed project for LPA was Sage Hill School’s new middle school and gymnasium building, which opened this month.

The Newport Beach private high school launched a $25 million campaign in 2023 to fund the construction of a 38,658-square-foot middle school, adding two grade levels and making Sage Hill the only independent school in Orange County to serve grades 7-12.

Rogers said that she attended the ribbon cutting ceremony on Aug. 17 where the school welcomed its inaugural class of approximately 140 middle school students.

“It was a bit of a teary moment, if I’m being honest,” she said. “It was 30 years ago I was walking across the snake ridden landscape, talking about what that school would be.”

The project marks another chapter in LPA’s decades long relationship with Sage Hill, dating back to 1966 when the firm master-planned and designed the school’s original campus.

Rogers said that LPA helped the school’s founders find leftover land from the Irvine Co.

Since then, LPA has done additional projects for Sage Hill including an aquatic and tennis center with a 25-yard-by-33-meter competition pool and modernization of a 20-year old library.