Housing Sites Reviewed to Keep Air Force in El Segundo : Defense: Lack of military housing is a major reason the base may be closed. Local leaders are looking at 17 vacant acres in Hawthorne. Some other locations have been rejected by the Air Force.

Local business and political leaders hoping to dissuade the Air Force from moving its high-tech Space Systems Division from the South Bay are looking at 17 acres of land in Hawthorne as a possible location for new Air Force housing.

The Air Force has cited a 250-unit housing shortage as a key reason it is considering moving its 3,200-employee space division out of El Segundo, possibly out of state.

The land in Hawthorne, owned by TRW and located at Rosecrans Avenue and Aviation Boulevard, is among several parcels being studied as an Air Force housing site.

Sources say the Air Force’s first choice would be to build in San Pedro, where all 574 of its local housing units are located. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s office has been considering ways to add Air Force housing there, city officials say, but the search has broadened because of concern that San Pedro residents might object to more military housing.

A bitterly contested attempt by the Air Force to expand its San Pedro housing ended in a 1987 compromise that allowed the military to build 170 new units on 34 acres of city park and recreation land.

“It would in my opinion be absolutely impossible to get a majority of people to agree with more military housing in San Pedro,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the area and who helped broker the 1987 deal. “I told the mayor that if he wants to (organize such a project) he can do it, but I’m not going to be a leader in this cause.”

Prompting the property hunt is a tentative Air Force plan to close Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo and move the Space Systems Division, the base’s main component, to Vandenberg AFB near Lompoc, March AFB near Riverside, Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, N.M., or the Peterson or Falcon bases near Colorado Springs, Colo.

Business and political leaders say the space division, which buys space hardware for the military, ranging from heavy-lift rockets to spy satellites, is an important stimulus to the local aerospace industry.

They also fear that moving the space division would trigger the relocation of the nonprofit Aerospace Corp., a 4,000-employee research and development center in El Segundo that works closely with the division.

The Department of Defense is expected to decide early next year whether to include Los Angeles AFB on a list of proposed base closings to be submitted by April 15 to a newly created federal commission on base closings.

To ensure that the Space Systems Division stays where it is, local leaders say they have to find land for Air Force housing soon.

“I remain very hopeful, but it’s a mixed bag,” said Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica). “The fact that we haven’t put it together raises some concern. I believe it’s imperative we pull this together within the next few weeks.”

Col. Glenn Perry, commander of Los Angeles AFB, says the Air Force would prefer that the new housing not be split among numerous parcels of land and that it be close to the other military housing in San Pedro or to the base in El Segundo. The Air Force is also weighing other factors, he says.

“We’re as concerned as any parents about things like schools, commuting distance and security,” Perry said last week. “We have to remember that this is family housing.”

Perry declined to say what properties have been proposed to the Air Force and what the service thinks of them. But sources say several sites outside San Pedro have been proposed informally and turned down.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said she suggested that several properties be considered, including city land immediately north of Los Angeles International Airport and a 16-acre parcel in Culver City.

Both were turned down, she said. “The Air Force apparently raised a series of concerns,” she said, “and there was not much point in pursuing it.”

Hawthorne officials say the Air Force has also rejected two sites in their city--the Jonas Salk Elementary School site and the recently completed Hawthorne Terrace, a 100-unit development built to help replace housing demolished by the Century Freeway project.

The service has expressed interest, however, in the 17-acre parcel at Aviation and Rosecrans, according to Levine and Hawthorne City Manager R. Kenneth Jue. The land is close to an Air Force recreation field and a mile south of Los Angeles AFB in El Segundo.

“It was a late comer,” Jue said. “But I talked to Col. Perry, and they love that site because it’s right next to their recreation field.”

Hawthorne officials say the land is in one of the city’s redevelopment areas. They say several options are being considered to secure it. One is for Hawthorne to acquire it under threat of condemnation with financial assistance from the state or other outside sources.

Such proposals are on hold, they say, pending a financial study of whether rental income from military families would eventually offset the cost of acquiring the property.

Kenneth Gibson, director of the state Department of Commerce, declined to discuss what assistance the state could provide, saying it would be inappropriate to address the subject. “I don’t want to preempt anything we might be doing,” Gibson said. “There may or may not be something the state can do.”

In San Pedro, inquiries about possible Air Force housing sites are being conducted gingerly for fear of community backlash.

William Chandler, a spokesman for Bradley, declined to identify the properties the mayor’s office is studying, saying only that it is “pursuing a number of sites, including some in the southern part of the city.”

However, Flores said the mayor has inquired about adding housing near two Air Force developments built in the White Point area as a result of the 1987 compromise. His office has also been studying the possibility of building Air Force housing in the Angels Gate area, sources say.

In both locations, the land under study was deeded to the city by the federal government in the mid-1970s with the stipulation that the government could reclaim it “for the national defense.”

Under the 1987 compromise, this provision no longer applies to city land in the White Point area. But it remains in force for city land in the Angels Gate area, city officials say.

Whether the Air Force would attempt to use the deed language to secure some Angels Gate property, however, is unclear. Perry, the Los Angeles AFB commander, said the Air Force would be reluctant to act without community support. “We would not want to force ourselves on anyone,” he said.

Flores says virtually any plan for new Air Force housing would run afoul of community concern about traffic congestion and losing potential park or recreation land. She predicts that resistance would come even though the Air Force personnel in San Pedro are considered good neighbors.

“Yes, they’re good neighbors,” Flores said. “But how many good neighbors is too many good neighbors?”