COUNTYWIDE : Media Event Barred at Canyon Jail Site

It was a lockout of sorts, and County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, Santa Ana City Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. and Santa Ana school board member Rob Richardson were not amused.

The three wanted to use the 3,200-acre Gypsum Canyon site owned by the Irvine Co. as a backdrop for their anti-Measure A news conference Friday.

At the last minute, they claimed, an Irvine Co. official said they could not use the canyon, which is located off the Riverside Freeway near Anaheim Hills and happens to be the site that the Board of Supervisors chose in 1987 to build the next county jail.

Stanton, Pulido and Richardson wanted the news media to see the remote canyon and how it differed from densely populated Santa Ana, where all future county jails would be built if Measure A passes on the June 5 ballot.

“I am outraged that the Irvine Co. would not open the gates for the news media and three elected officials,” Stanton said. “To me, that is the same as the company tacitly supporting Measure A--the same measure they say they do not want to get involved in.”

Irvine Co. Vice President Larry Thomas said a decision not to allow the property to be used for the news conference was made because the company did not want to leave the impression that it wanted a jail to be built there or that it was involved in any way with Measure A.

“We have no involvement in Measure A,” Thomas said. “Its outcome has no effect on the company.”

Thomas said the Irvine Co. is opposed to building a jail in Gypsum Canyon and has preliminary plans to develop a residential community there. But he acknowledged that the county could acquire the property through eminent domain proceedings and pay the company for it.

Called the Centralized Jail Initiative, Measure A was placed on the ballot by homeowners in Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills. It is an outgrowth of their opposition to the county’s plan to build the jail on the nearby canyon site.

Santa Ana residents have vehemently opposed the idea of putting another jail alongside the Central Men’s and Women’s jails and the Intake/Release Center at the Civic Center Complex.

Stanton said the county has spent $6 million and taken seven years to plan for a jail in Gypsum Canyon.

Pulido said: “To build a facility of the size needed by the County of Orange by the year 2000 would require the condemnation of a minimum of 50 acres in downtown Santa Ana.”