Redondo Considers Scaling Back Aviation Park Plans : Recreation: Council learns that cost estimates for the renovation project are rising. But changing the plan would require a public hearing.

Concerned about overextending the city in the face of an impending recession, the Redondo Beach City Council is considering scaling back its popular multimillion-dollar plan to revamp the old Aviation High School campus into a recreational complex.

“The people have got to know how much this is going to cost,” Councilwoman Kay Horrell said Tuesday.

The plan was approved just six months ago after more than six years of community debate over what to do with the campus. The recreational complex--featuring two pools, two tennis courts and an upgraded gym and auditorium--was supposed to cost the city about $9 million.

But new cost estimates in July raised the projected price to more than $10.6 million, about $1.1 million more than the capital funds the city has available.

The estimates came on the heels of a pessimistic financial report from Tim Casey, then Redondo Beach’s city manager. Casey warned council members that in today’s soft real estate market they could not expect to rely anymore on the booming local growth that kept the city in the black during the 1980s. Property taxes make up more than a third of the beach city’s tax base.

Adding to the concern, economic analysts are predicting a recession for 1990 and beyond, prompting businesses and municipalities nationwide to cut back spending.

Although Redondo Beach can finance most of the construction of the Aviation Park complex with redevelopment bonds, council members said maintenance and operating costs--estimated at more than $475,000 a year--might eventually land the city in the red.

“The concern,” said Mayor Brad Parton, “is ending up with a mega-structure that costs us more than we anticipated to maintain, and that will end up as a deficit on our tax rolls.”

Any serious change in the plans for Aviation Park would require a public hearing, and more discussion of the issue is scheduled for the next council meeting in two weeks.

After more than an hour of debate Tuesday, the council was still undecided about whether and how to keep down the cost of the proposed complex.

Parton, for example, questioned the cost estimates for upgrading the gymnasium, insisting that the city could build a brand-new gym for what consultants said it would cost to renovate the old one.

Horrell suggested revamping the former campus in phases rather than all at once. Upgrading the auditorium could be postponed, she said, as could many of the gym renovations.

Councilwoman Barbara Doerr asked the city staff to estimate how much could be saved if several features of the plan were scaled back. For example, she suggested eliminating the proposed diving pool and making do with one main pool that would include a kiddie pool at the shallow end.

But Councilman Ron Cawdrey pushed for building the entire project before the economy gets any worse. As time passes, he said, inflation will make it more expensive to borrow the money for the project via a bond issue. And if the city builds an attractive enough complex, he said, it can be marketed to outsiders, raising money to offset the operating costs.

“We’ve got an 11-acre park that’s costing us a bundle just to keep as is,” Cawdrey said. “Now we have a chance to do something with it and to market it. We’re crazy if we don’t.”

The debate is just the latest wrinkle in the long and tortuous history of Aviation Park, which was created in 1984, two years after the high school on the city’s north side was closed because of declining enrollment.

Fearing that the school would be demolished and commercial development would rise in its place, a group of residents forced an election on a plan to limit development on 11 acres of the campus, including the key school buildings and the best access to major streets.

After the most emotional and politically divisive campaign in city history, the measure passed by just two votes.

The site, which has been leased to the city for 99 years by the South Bay Union High School District, is used mostly by local theater groups, who present plays in the auditorium, and by TRW employees, who work out in the gym.

The surrounding acreage, which used to be part of the campus, is now the Redondo Beach Business Court, a massive office complex that includes TRW’s Space Park. Occasionally, people attending events at the campus are permitted to park on TRW land.

Years of debate went into the renovation plan approved by the City Council in March. Applauded on the night it passed by a packed council chamber full of swimmers, joggers, grade-school basketball players and other local athletes, the plan included one pool for children and general use and a second for competitive diving and lap swimming; retention of the campus’s popular quarter-mile clay track and infield; a new workout room in the gymnasium, and various other improvements.