The team of four students who collaborated on Orange Coast College's winning entry included Nicholas Holmes of Costa Mesa, Jack Kato of Fountain Valley, David Esparza of Huntington Beach and Jennifer Semans of Rancho Santa Margarita. Holmes and Kato both plan to transfer next year to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as architecture majors. Semans will transfer to UC Berkeley, and Esparza will transfer to Woodbury University in San Diego. Entrants were asked to explore ways in which the county could absorb an additional one million residents, one million new jobs and 300,000 housing units.
Orange County has the highest population density of any county in the state.
OCC's students competed in the open division of the competition against professional architects and architecture students from other colleges and universities. They were up against outstanding competition. The category required that entrants develop ideas that encourage pedestrian, bicycle and other alternative modes of transportation. The students proposed a light rail mass transit system that would extend from the Disney Resort in Anaheim to the Balboa Peninsula, using Harbor, Newport and Balboa boulevards. One of the institutions along the route is Orange Coast College.