County Says Airport Monorail Ad Is Premature : Transportation: It isn’t a done deal yet, airport officials reply to full-page congratulatory message from McDonnell Douglas.

McDonnell Douglas Realty Co. ran full-page advertisements Friday trumpeting its planned, half-mile airport monorail, but county officials said the privately financed project is not yet on track.

Although the Irvine City Council approved the project two weeks ago, McDonnell Douglas has been late in submitting plans and construction schedules to the county, Airport Manager George Rebella warned county airport commissioners earlier this week.

Rebella said he supports the project but warned that its construction will disrupt airport traffic. He cited plans for a support column that will have to be placed in a busy car rental area after the new, $61-million passenger terminal is completed, and another column at the MacArthur Boulevard entrance to the airport.

Another problem: Preliminary designs called for a column that would not support the weight of a planned, 124-foot-long monorail guide-beam.

“None of these problems is insurmountable,” Rebella told the commissioners at their regular meeting Wednesday night. “But we are concerned about disruption to normal airport activities.”

McDonnell Douglas canceled a meeting with airport officials earlier this week, so the officials are still awaiting a construction schedule and engineering data.

The firm agreed two years ago to pay for the monorail, which is expected to cost more than $4 million, and connect the company’s planned office complex across the street from the airport with the new terminal.

Delays in processing the office complex through the maze of Irvine city politics nearly killed the project, however, until a compromise was reached that gave McDonnell Douglas a controversial density bonus in exchange for building the monorail.

But partly in response to the political victory, the company’s newspaper advertisements portrayed a gleaming monorail car passing over a road jammed with cars, against a background of twin, 24-story office towers.

“Congratulations Orange County. You win. The first privately funded, public monorail is on track,” the advertisement stated.

A coupon at the bottom of the ad thanked the public for its support of the monorail project and asks readers to clip it out and send it in to Bob Young, president of the realty firm.

Young said in an interview that the ad is intended to thank people whose support was needed to gain the necessary project permits in Irvine.

The coupon, he said, was needed because there are plans to connect the airport monorail with a five-mile-long monorail loop under consideration in the Irvine Business Complex, and other monorails that may be built in adjacent cities.

“We’re building a data base of support and of people who are interested because this is just the beginning,” Young said. “We have had a wonderful response. I’m shocked by the number of people who have called me today to say how much they support what we’re doing.”

But some county officials, including airport commissioners, were a little more skeptical.

“I would surmise that they just want to place enough pressure on the county to put that (airport) monorail project in quick, without any hassles,” said Huntington Beach Councilman Don McAllister, a member of the airport panel.

“We certainly want the monorail very badly, but we can’t put posts in the middle of major thoroughfares or disrupt the airport,” he said.

McDonnell Douglas’ Young said the foundation for the monorail line will be completed before the new passenger terminal opens Sept. 16, and the guide beam will be installed after hours, so that traffic won’t be disrupted.

Airport officials said, however, that they have not yet received the necessary documentation to know if Young’s comments are accurate.