The Packing District: How a Citrus Plant Became Anaheim's Living Room
The restored Packing House food hall anchors a downtown revival built from the city's citrus past, a farmers park and a century-old warehouse.
In the middle of downtown Anaheim stands the building that best explains the city: a 1919 citrus packing house, built when orange groves defined Orange County, now filled with food stalls, communal tables and weekend crowds. The Anaheim Packing House is the centerpiece of the Packing District, a walkable cluster that also includes Farmers Park and the restored Packard Building, and it has become the default meeting place for a city long known mainly for its Resort District.
The concept is a food hall with deep local roots. Vendors occupy stalls under the packing house's high, light-filled trusses, serving everything from ramen and Indian street food to ice cream and coffee, while long tables in the center encourage strangers to share space. The building's industrial bones remain visible throughout, from freight doors to the orange crate aesthetic that nods to the Sunkist-era workers who once sorted fruit on the same floor.
Farmers Park, the green space alongside, extends the experience outdoors with a boardwalk, olive trees and a regular schedule of markets and community events. On weekend mornings the district works as a farmers market and family gathering spot; by evening it shifts toward live music and dinner crowds. That all-day rhythm is what distinguishes the Packing District from a conventional mall: it functions as public space first and retail second.
For visitors, the district pairs naturally with Anaheim's other draws. It sits a short drive or bus ride from Disneyland and Angel Stadium, near the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center and the Anaheim Central Library downtown. Parking is available in district structures, and the area's flat, shaded streets reward arriving a little early and exploring on foot, including the Center Street Promenade's shops and public art.
City leaders have pointed to the Packing District as proof that Anaheim's identity can hold more than one story at once. The groves are gone from downtown, but their packing house now feeds the city in a different way, as a place where longtime residents, downtown workers and tourists end up at the same long tables. That mixture, renewed daily, is the district's real product.
