Airport Activists Taking a Good Look at Adelanto

With only slightly less verve than an old-fashioned land auction, this high-desert community of 10,000 people near Victorville told about 300 developers, bankers, urban planners and business executives Tuesday that it wants to be the site of an international airport and high-speed rail facility.

Orange County officials, desperate to find relief for overcrowded John Wayne Airport, helped lead Adelanto’s three-hour workshop, which focused on the city’s dream of converting George Air Force Base into a regional airport when the Pentagon closes the 6,000-acre base in 1992.

“We are about to see a quantum leap in surface and air transportation in Southern California,” said Costa Mesa Mayor Peter F. Buffa, speaking to an overflow crowd at Adelanto’s City Hall. Appearing 95 miles from his own political turf, Buffa said George Air Force Base represents the only site available for a major new airport in Southern California.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth agreed and boosted the planned high-speed train link between Las Vegas and Anaheim. Roth is vice chairman of the California-Nevada Super Speed Ground Transportation Commission, which is scheduled to select a franchisee in October for the 300-m.p.h. rail service.

Buffa and Roth said the train and airport proposals need each other in order to work. The rail link must be approved by both the California and Nevada legislatures, and Roth urged Adelanto residents to support it with letters to their elected representatives.

Meanwhile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and McDonnell Douglas officials told the gathering that George could be just the ticket for travelers who will be flying in supersonic airliners and even NASA’s aerospace plane, which is being designed to achieve Earth orbit.

Federal officials have proposed using sites such as George as huge, remote “wayports” or “mega-hubs” to handle such futuristic aircraft and all long-distance flights, with smaller airports acting as feeders.

Kathryn Gray of the Newport Beach-based Planning Center, which is under contract to Adelanto to help complete its airport plans, warned the audience that there would be great risks to Adelanto and its airport advocates if they think “too small.”

Gray said that by the year 2010 Southern California airports will fall short of passenger capacity by 25 million boardings a year, 15 million alone in Orange County.

Gray works for the firm that found four potential airport sites for Orange County’s Airport Site Coalition, but George Air Force Base was not among them because coalition directors considered it to be too remote.

Gray undercut the coalition Tuesday by saying that the four sites--Cristianitos Canyon and Potrero Los Pinos in Orange County, South Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, and March Air Force Base in Riverside County--will probably never be used because of severe environmental and political obstacles.

Adelanto Mayor Ed Dondelinger conceded that most workshop attendees were not from Adelanto. But he said the town’s people are nearly unanimous in their support.

Ron Takai, vice president of the Brea-based Nupac development firm, said he came to the meeting because of the investment opportunities for his company. “I’ve believed in Adelanto for a long time,” he said.

And Dondelinger vowed: “We’re the little, visionary city that is going to make it out of the weeds.”