Cordova

Cordova covers 99.7 acres in two separate parts and records 520 addresses on 520 parcels, one home to a lot, with a median lot of 0.123 acres. Twenty three streets run 3.43 miles inside the boundary, most of them Spanish, among them Ayamonte, Benidorm, Colmenar, El Retiro, Jardines, Miraflores, Pinocha and Tossamar. Cordova Park sits inside the boundary at 26931 El Retiro, 12.7 acres carrying restrooms, walking trails, a softball field, a baseball field, a soccer and football field, a turf volleyball court, two playgrounds and seven picnic tables.

The general plan carries 98.3 acres at 3.5 to 6.5 homes an acre with 1 acre as recreation and open space, and the whole boundary sits in flood zone X. Capistrano Unified serves it, and the district's address locator returns Carl Hankey Elementary at 284 students, Carl Hankey Middle at 181 and Capistrano Valley High at 1,991 from every interior point tested.

Cordova is one of the Mission Viejo Company's Spanish-named neighborhoods, part of the design language written into the master plan that put stucco walls, barrel tile roofs and Spanish place names across the community. Cordova met with huge sales success in 1975, placing its opening in the middle of the strongest stretch of Mission Viejo's original build-out.

Cordova Park opened in 1979 and quickly became the neighborhood's gathering point. It hosted Mission Viejo's first annual Easter Egg Hunt in 1980 and, two years later, a 1,000-foot banana split event, the kind of oversized community stunt the city's recreation centers staged through the late 1970s and early 1980s to mark milestones. The park still anchors the Cordova and South Cordova neighborhoods today.