Housing Plan Called Crucial in Effort to Save Air Force Base : Aerospace: Shutting down the unit could cost the area thousands of jobs and $3.5 billion in contracts. But some San Pedro residents say they’ve done more than enough to accommodate the military.

Warning that the South Bay faces yet another devastating round of aerospace layoffs if an Air Force space division takes flight from El Segundo, local officials have unveiled a plan to retain the base by providing badly needed military housing in San Pedro.

But the proposal to build some 250 homes on 20 acres at Angels Gate Park has already drawn fire from some San Pedro residents who insist that their community has done more than its share to accommodate the military.

The housing plan, to be the subject of a 7 p.m. public hearing Thursday at Peck Park in San Pedro, follows months of discussion between the Air Force, the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the property targeted for the housing.

Under the proposal, endorsed by Mayor Tom Bradley and an array of local business and community leaders, the school district land would be offered to the Air Force to accommodate up to 250 two-story homes for officers assigned to the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo. The facility was formerly known as the Space Systems Division.

The plan calls for relocating six portable classrooms now used for child care and a continuation school from the school property to nearby city-owned land at Angels Gate Park. In addition, an athletic field on the school property would be closed, and a new one opened on the city-owned land.

Driving the proposal are fears that the Air Force base, long in need of additional housing for its officers, will be among those targeted by the Pentagon when it releases a new base-closure list in the next few months.

That would likely mean the relocation out of state of the base’s main tenant--the space center, which procures space hardware for the military and is considered a key stimulus for Southern California’s aerospace industry.

Business and political leaders say such a move would deliver a severe blow to a region already reeling from layoffs in the defense industry.

“We have been told it is virtually a 100% certainty the base will be closed and relocated out of state unless the housing issue is resolved,” said Leron Gubler, president of the South Bay Assn. of Chambers of Commerce. And if that occurs, Gubler said, “it would affect every homeowner and business in this area, one way or another.”

Col. Glenn Perry, the base commander, agreed last week that more housing is crucial to the base’s future.

“Although additional housing will not guarantee that we’ll remain off the closure list, without it, we could almost certainly move,” Perry said. He also praised the proposed housing site as an “excellent location” because of its proximity to existing Air Force housing at Ft. MacArthur.

Gubler’s warning is based on both the significant number of Air Force personnel assigned to the local Air Force base and its links to local aerospace contractors.

Economic studies, Gubler said, show closure of the Air Force base would mean the loss of some 7,200 jobs at the space center and the Aerospace Corp.--a nonprofit research and development facility that works closely with the Air Force. Those two employers alone, Gubler said, have a combined $1.2-billion impact on the local economy in payroll and purchases.

And a 1991 study, he said, concluded that shuttering the Air Force base could result in the loss of an estimated $3.5 billion in aerospace contracts and cause anywhere from 16,500 to 54,700 layoffs at businesses that benefit directly and indirectly from the space center.

“If we lose the base, over the long term, it is very likely we could see the aerospace giants follow,” Gubler said. “That is not a scare tactic. That is just a fact.”

Such scenarios have prompted some traditional skeptics of military housing proposals--local homeowner groups, for instance--to take a serious look at supporting the plan for Angels Gate.

“We have done our share about military housing. No question about it . . . and we want to be very careful about increasing housing densities in the southern end of San Pedro,” said Jerry Gaines, president of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition and co-chair of a citizens advisory panel studying the new plan.

“On the other hand, our position has to be balanced against the great economic and jobs consequences” of not providing Air Force housing, he said.

Gaines described the proposal as “probably the lesser of evils” when measured against the possible loss of employment in the region. He said he and many other members of a panel advising City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores on the development of Angels Gate Park believe the Air Force housing proposal must be carefully considered.

Other members of the committee, however, fear the plan might irreparably damage the quality of life in San Pedro.

For example, Greg Smith, president of the Point Fermin Homeowners Assn., points out that San Pedro already has more than 700 Navy housing units and 570 Air Force units--170 of which were built since the Air Force last warned that it might leave, in the late 1980s.

At that time, Smith and other neighborhood organizers assert, local residents were assured that the Air Force would do what it could to make the additional housing at 25th Street and Western Avenue aesthetically compatible with the community. Instead, they said, the Air Force built housing that has proven an eyesore.

“It looks like row housing in Belfast,” said Noah Modisett, chairman of the San Pedro Community Plan Advisory Committee.

Additional military housing would also seriously burden local streets and schools, which could be forced to absorb as many as 500 additional students from Air Force families, Smith said.

Moreover, Smith said his group also is not convinced that the Pentagon’s base-closure recommendation won’t hinge on a number of strategic and budgetary considerations, not just San Pedro’s willingness to accommodate more Air Force housing.

Nor does the association believe that the space center’s relocation to another state would prompt a flight of aerospace companies, he said. “I think that’s been overstated,” he said.

School district officials so far appear to support the housing plan on grounds that it has potential economic benefits for the region. But the district is still studying the proposal, said Tony Ricasa, an aide to Harbor-area school board member Warren Furutani.

Harbor Councilwoman Flores said that while she has not endorsed the plan, the potential consequences of a base closure persuade her that the Air Force housing plan demands “another look.”

Meanwhile, two state lawmakers have advanced other plans to accommodate both the immediate and long-term housing needs of the Air Force in bills now moving through the Legislature.

One of the measures, authored by state Sen. Robert Beverly, R-Manhattan Beach, would allow the state, the county, and the cities of Hawthorne, El Segundo and Inglewood to form a joint powers agreement to provide $500,000 this year and next for temporary housing assistance to Air Force personnel. That bill, SB 1783, has cleared the Senate and is scheduled for an Aug. 5 hearing in the Assembly’s Housing and Community Development Committee.

Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood) is sponsoring another bill, AB 3325, that would enable cities to set aside up to 50% of their low- and moderate-income housing monies in a new multimillion-dollar fund that could be used for new Air Force housing.

Military Housing

Local officials have unveiled a plan aimed at retaining the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo by providing 20 acres at Angels Gate Park in San Pedro for up to 250 military homes.