When one company owns the land and one city emerges from it, alliances, passion, and familial infighting become entwined. So it is with the 32-year-old city of Irvine and a company with roots going back to the 1800s.

Mayor Larry Agran says his relationship with Bren "divides conveniently into two periods I served on the City Council." In the 1980s, the fight was to preserve open space. "At that time, there was no open space agreement and so with every development proposal brought by the company we would slug it out because of all the uncertainty people felt about the vanishing open space.

"Donald Bren naturally was focused on development and the built community and my focus was on open space."

Agran was mayor from 1982-1984 and then again from 1986-1988 at a time when the title was rotated among council members. He was elected mayor from 1988-90, defeated, and elected to four-year terms in 1998 and 2002. His power rests in the majority he shares with council members Chris Mears and Beth Krom.

"The big change in my relationship with Mr. Bren and The Irvine Co. came when I returned as mayor in 1998 and by this time the Open Space Agreement was in place, had worked well and was being honored by both sides," Agran says about the 1988 voter approval to preserve more than 13,000 acres throughout the city. "The dominant issue was El Toro. The Irvine Co. stayed neutral during the fight over El Toro but in the '90s I always characterized their neutrality as tilting toward an airport. At that time they expected an airport was going to be built. By 2000, the company was still neutral but it began to see that the fight against an airport was going to succeed and they were attracted to the idea of a great park. In the end they were neutral but tilting toward a great park."