As a former resident of Columbus Grove (I lived in the Irvine side of CG), I wanted to give my opinion as well.
When I was looking for a place in Irvine about 3 years ago, I looked in (pretty much) all of the Irvine neighborhoods, including Portola and CG. Not being familiar with Irvine, I figured that any place in Irvine would do (I was not familiar with the prestige and/or stigma of specific communities). I saw a few places in PS, but I was not particularly fond of the location, as it felt a bit out of the way, and further from the freeways. Also, at that time, Portola was not as developed as it is today; thus, to me, it felt a bit out of the way and empty.
What I ended up liking about CG, and why I ended up picking a place there, was the location - it is centrally located right between the 405 and 5 freeways, it is close to Jamboree, the District (Costco, Target, Lowes, etc.), Crossroads (Target, Chipotle, Fish Grill), 99 Ranch/BevMo/24 Hour Fitness, Diamond Jamboree plaza, and John Wayne Airport. Also, you have the Mountains-to-Sea Trail close by (which is also now accessible directly from the community without having to go on Harvard). Although there was a comment about the lack of stores that you can walk to, I have biked from our place to the Target at the Crossroads shopping center. With the trail, you never have to ride your bike on a major road.
As far as real estate prices go, I did notice that CG prices were hit fairly hard between 2010 and 2012, especially when you compared CG prices to those in other more "desirable" or "prestigious" communities of Irvine. This may also be due to the time period in which CG was built - many of those homes were built and sold during the 2006 time period; thus, there ended up being a number of short sales in the neighborhood. However, it looks like prices in CG, as in most of Irvine, have rebounded this year, although other folks may be able to comment more on this.
Since I don't have kids, but also, since I was not as educated about the various Irvine schools, I wasn't quite as concerned about which schools CG fed into. In my mind, Irvine schools are all great, and the API scores for its schools would be the envy of most cities; however, I understand that we all have differing opinions as to what scores are acceptable, and I can't really comment much more on that.
But in conclusion, I personally prefer the location of CG over PS; I do recognize that there are pros and cons to both neighborhoods, but if I had to do it all over again and could only choose between CG and PS, I would still pick CG for its location.
