Desert City Dreams of Super Airport

As civic assets go, airports rank right up there with garbage dumps and jails: Society needs them, but these are not facilities the average mayor highlights in the annual state-of-the-city address. Bureaucrats call them LULUs: large, unwanted land-uses.

So what is one to make of Adelanto? This scrappy little burg in the high desert north of San Bernardino is defying logic by wooing, of all things, a commercial airport. And not just any airport.

Adelanto, population 10,000, wants to create a “superport”--a massive, sprawling thing capable of accommodating supersonic aircraft and ultimately serving 50 million passengers a year. The plan is to convert George Air Force Base--a mere mile from downtown Adelanto--into a commercial aviation facility when the Pentagon abandons the base in December, 1992.

“People think we’re crazy and wonder why we’d want to live with airport noise,” said Mayor Ed Dondelinger, a fast-talking fellow who personifies Adelanto’s can-do spirit. “Well, we’ve been living with noise (from military jets) for 48 years. So it’s high time we got some payoff from it.”

Adelanto is winning support for its vision in many corners of Southern California. The Orange County Board of Supervisors recently voted to scrap two proposed airport sites in their county and throw their weight behind the idea of the desert superport.

Skeptics note that the Adelanto terminal would be 75 miles from Santa Ana, but Orange County Supervisor Don Roth is convinced that the proposed Anaheim-to-Las Vegas high-speed train would make catching airplanes in the desert a cinch.

“Don’t you see how beautifully this all links together?” Roth asked recently, pointing to a picture of the 300-m.p.h. magnetic levitation train he believes will soon be whizzing passengers across the Mojave. “Twenty-two minutes--that’s all it would take you to get from Anaheim to your plane in Adelanto.”

Rep. Ron Packard, a Republican who represents parts of San Diego and Orange counties and sits on the House subcommittee on aviation, has also signed on, declaring that “George is definitely a doable solution.”

But friends in high places may not be enough for Adelanto. For starters, its neighbors in Victorville, Apple Valley and other high-desert communities do not share the view that a sky full of DC-10s would be a godsend for the region.

Moreover, another desert city--Palmdale--has for years been waiting for the day when its tiny airport, run by the city of Los Angeles, grows into an international operation and brings a bonanza of jobs and commerce to the Antelope Valley. Because most experts agree there is not sufficient demand for two desert airfields, a bitter face-off lies ahead.

So far, tensions between the two proposals have mostly just simmered. Billboards tout the Palmdale airport along inland highways, while Adelanto plays host to an endless stream of investors, aviation-industry executives and politicians intrigued by the tiny city’s big dreams.

But earlier this month, the Antelope Valley got a hefty boost when a private consortium proposed building an 80-m.p.h. magnetic levitation rail line from Los Angeles International Airport to Palmdale. The project still must be approved by Caltrans, but the announcement created uneasiness in Orange County, Adelanto and among the swarms of investors gobbling up land around George Air Force Base.

Ultimately, the desert airport rivalry could become moot. Because before Adelanto can carry out its plans, it must first win control of the 6,000-acre base.

The Pentagon is weighing two proposals for the base--the one from Adelanto, and the second from a coalition of other San Bernardino County cities called the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority, which envisions a smaller, regional field on par with Ontario International Airport.

Authority members worry that Adelanto’s alternative would bring noise, air pollution and other unsavory changes to their rapidly growing valley, home to about 250,000 people. And many of them resent the suggestion that the desert should shoulder the burden of easing the Southland’s air transportation crunch.

“I frankly don’t think all the air congestion problems in Southern California should be visited on the Victor Valley,” Victorville Mayor Terry Caldwell said.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Marsha Turoci, the Victor Valley authority’s chairwoman, agreed, noting that “we have to remember that Orange County and everybody else is supporting this superport because it’s something they don’t want in their communities.”

Mayor Dondelinger says such skeptics suffer from myopia and vows to mire redevelopment of the base in lawsuits if Adelanto does not get its way. “Let ‘em try to stop us,” he warned.

Such determination illustrates the importance of the proposed superport to Adelanto, a dusty town on U.S. 395 where City Hall shares the major intersection with a card club, a massage parlor and a convenience store.

Already, Dondelinger figures Adelanto has spent close to $1 million on its superport plan. Bumper stickers promoting the “Hi-Desert International Airport” have become as ubiquitous as the Joshua trees, and city offices are bedecked with glossy schematics of futuristic aircraft taking off from the sprawling facility.

Finally, to show “we’re dead serious about this thing and will pay any price” for the air base, Dondelinger on three occasions has given checks to Pentagon officials during visits to Washington. The checks--for $100,000, $500,000 and finally $1 million--were returned.

Patricia Chamberlaine, the city’s administrator, said a superport would bring desperately needed jobs and economic development to Adelanto, a community without a supermarket, bank or hardware store.

But she believes the city’s plan would be good for Southern California as well.

“We’re ready to roll, but the offer won’t last forever,” Chamberlaine said. “Southern California needs this airport. They ought to seize the opportunity.”

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.