The Field of Dreams : Little Krakow? A Film Studio? Tustin Finds No Lack of Ideas for How to Use a Blimp Facility That’s for Sale.

Tustin city officials asked for ideas, and that’s what they got.

They didn’t specify that the ideas be affordable, or even realistic. They just asked for suggestions about what to do with that huge plot of land headed for development.

It’s the 1,569-acre Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, completed in 1943 as home for Navy blimps patrolling the coast for Japanese submarines. Converted for helicopters, the base’s two Gargantuan blimp hangars remain as local landmarks listed in the Register of National Historic Places.

Now the base is on the for-sale list and part of Pentagon retrenchment. No deeds will be signed until the decade is almost gone, but neither that, nor the disdain of professional planners, has discouraged a parade of proposals filed with the Marine Corps and at Tustin City Hall.

The city’s consultants favor mainstream development--homes, industries, a park and golf course--and their proposals will go before the city’s base reuse task force today. Most expect the task force to eventually adopt the consultants’ proposals with little amendment.

But look what might have been:

Snow Business

Orange County has thousands of skiers but no place to ski.

David R. Moffett, who represents the Australian manufacturer of Permasnow, says he can provide the remedy if he can get one of those blimp hangars.

Indoor skiing is a fact in Japan and Australia, where broad ramps inside domes are covered with Permasnow--non-melting, jellylike globules that pass for powder. But these slopes are dinky compared to what could fit into one of those hangars, Moffett says.

Wide as a football field, long as three football fields, tall as an 18-story building with nothing obstructing its seven acres of floor space, one hangar “would probably hold two slopes,” Moffett says. “It could be 145 feet tall, about 1,000 feet long and 235 feet wide at the base. There’d be a beginning and intermediate slope; that’s where the market is.”

With half a million skiers in Orange and surrounding counties and with a capacity of “700 to 800 people at one time,” a Tustin Ski Dome couldn’t miss, Moffett says.

The city’s consultants say this might not be feasible because it requires a ton of money to maintain the old buildings.

According to the Marines, every five years it costs $1.2 million per hangar just to tighten the 143 tons of bolts that hold together its wooden framework. It would cost $20 million per hangar to completely refurbish the building. The Marines figure they need to set aside $400,000 a year as a maintenance budget.

Any backers for a Tustin Ski Dome? Not yet.

It’s a Jungle in There

Paul I. Brecht looks at the blimp hangars and sees orchids. But in Brecht’s world, you look anywhere and you see orchids.

He’s been running Brecht Orchid Gardens in Costa Mesa since 1963, and for 15 years he’s been trying to find a public place for his orchid plants and huge horticulture library. He had gathered 100,000 plants hoping that Costa Mesa would devote some park space to an orchid garden, but last year the city turned down the proposal as impractical. Brecht gave many of his plants to the Fullerton Arboretum and now keeps 2,000 stored in his yards at home.

“I call it Brecht’s Ark,” Brecht says.

But he sees a solution: Turn one of the blimp hangars into an arboretum.

“No botanical garden in the world would have anything its equal,” Brecht told the city’s task force. “Our wealthy Orange County deserves nothing but the best.”

Brecht says it would be nothing less than a rain forest, and there’s some evidence to support it. Marines say that even now it sometimes rains inside the hangars. The ceilings are so high, clouds sometimes form there and drop moisture.

“You wouldn’t need any heat in there,” Brecht says. “You could grow any tropical plants. You could have many, many gatherings there for weddings and parties, and those bring in quite a bit of money.”

Any backers?

“I really haven’t found anybody to follow through,” Brecht says.

Inflated Hopes

Thomas Webb, a Florida citrus rancher and “kind of self-taught engineer,” would plant an entirely different garden.

He wants about 100 acres somewhere near the blimp hangars so he can tether 125 large helium balloons. Suspended from the balloons would be 125 wind-driven electrical generators producing cheap, clean power for the city.

“You can call it a balloon garden,” Webb says. “You can actually put signage on the balloons--’Eat at Joe’s’ or whatever you want. Or the name of the city, just like on water tanks. You watch (the wind generators) for a while and they’re very aesthetic.”

Why balloons?

Because an aerodynamically shaped balloon would divert wind downward toward the generator, multiplying the wind force, Webb says.

“I’m hoping for a research grant,” Webb says, “but it hasn’t gotten further than letter-writing yet.”

And Be Sure to Check the Oil

Brian Curry of Laguna Hills submitted what may be the most surprising proposal.

He suggested that the hangars, designed as maintenance facilities for blimps, be used as . . . maintenance facilities for blimps.

This is not an original idea. Even though Navy blimp operations ended in Tustin in 1949, at least six blimp companies have been renting hangar maintenance space there for $250 to $500 a day. The Goodyear blimp, for example, needs maintenance twice a year.

“Every blimp that ever flies into L.A.--Fuji, Bud, Metropolitan Life, Sea World, Family Channel--will eventually call in there for one thing or another,” says Bob Urhausen of Goodyear.

“Obviously from the airship standpoint, wouldn’t we love to see the hangars remain open, because the alternatives are not good. Where do we go from here? Our closest hangar is in Akron. But in all reality, it’s probably not feasible.”

All that is secondary to Curry. He figures that if the blimps still use the base, the runway will remain intact and therefore still be available to his club, the Tustin Model Aircraft Assn., for flying radio-controlled models.

“It’s hard to find space, especially in the metropolitan area,” he explains.

Wish Upon a Star

Wieslaw Czajkowski of La Jolla wants to do for Tustin what Walt Disney did for Anaheim.

But instead of appealing to tourists’ love of cartoon characters and thrill rides, Czajkowski’s theme park would appeal to the average person’s longing to see medieval Poland.

Driving up to Little Krakow, you’d see 400 acres surrounded by wall and moat. Inside it would look like the old city, except there would be souvenirs and food inside the old buildings and simulated tournaments on the green.

Czajkowski, the driving force behind his Modjeskis Society, is trying to create a historical district to preserve and venerate Polish culture, he says. When he is given the 400 acres, he will be able to raise all the money he needs from “Polish American patriots,” he says.

The Native American Indian Cultural Center, an organization that works from a donated desk in a Tustin real estate office, has no actual center yet. But a spokeswoman says it could use the base land to build a center and attract paying tourists and make money to benefit Native Americans.

The cultural center would be, in effect, a theme park, with Native Americans demonstrating crafts and performing for visitors, who could stay at the center’s hotel. The Native Americans would live at the center, be paid for their work and get a college education at a branch campus built at the center by some university.

Deanne Tate, spokeswoman for the center, says so far the effort is “all volunteer.”

“We have no source of funds yet, but we’ve been talking to several foundations, and you never know.”

Money is also missing from a third theme park proposal, but that isn’t really a problem, says Thomas R. Holladay, a general contractor in Los Angeles who is dealing in movie scripts at present.

To build the Great American Adventure theme park he envisions, “we’re talking $500 million here, but that’s nothing these days.”

He and partner Michael S. Wilson, publisher of a Los Angeles nightclub magazine, say they won’t accept any Disney money because “we were worried about losing our historical accuracy.” Each section of the 125-acre park would authentically portray a period and place in American history, he says, from from the First Thanksgiving outdoor buffet “hosted by Native Americans” to the the Early Chicago Speak-easy restaurant in Gangster Town “on the other side of the tracks.”

But they will accept federal, state and municipal grants, he adds.

“We’re dreamers,” Holladay says. “You know, Walt Disney started with Mickey Mouse and celluloid, and 20 years later he’s a movie mogul.”

Lights, Camera . . . Where’d They Go?

The letterhead identified them as Taft, Edwards, McNab & Austin, investment bankers of Irvine. They wrote that they had their proposal before “major financiers in New York and San Francisco.”

A movie studio, they wrote, was “the ideal plan for this area.” It would “alleviate some of the Los Angeles studios’ current space problems. Sony, Fox, MGM and the nets and cable people all require more stages.”

The investment firm “has access to the major powerbrokers in the studio business” and “will outline proposals for presentation to every studio chairman.”

Theirs was one of the few suggestions that consultants thought compatible with their own plans.

Good news?

Can’t say, for at Taft, Edwards, McNab & Austin, the phone is disconnected and telephone information could find no new number anywhere in Southern California.

Close the Door Behind You

Some proposals wilted away as soon as they came in contact with the Orange County way of life.

The Federal Aviation Administration was interested in maintaining an airport on the base. So was the Coast Guard. Both retreated after the first contacts.

Then the federal Department of Justice tried. Interested in a site for a 250-acre prison, they sent a representative from the Bureau of Prisons to speak with city officials. The meeting was more than a little chilly and the proposal was withdrawn.

“We’ve never really had a difficult time (finding locations) with the exception of California, even though we already have several facilities there,” says Natalie Landy of the Bureau of Prisons.

“This size prison has an operating budget of $12 to $15 million, 250 to 300 employees and would contract for about $60 million in construction over two years,” she says. “Usually people are asking us to come into town.”

And Now for the Bottom Line

Governments know how to work with governments, and plenty of them have signed up for a piece of this government land. Most want the Marines to exercise a provision of the law and donate the land for the public good, and many have succeeded in arranging just that in the past.

Some requests are routine: land for an animal shelter, land to widen streets, land for a local school or two. But some are definitely not.

The Board of Supervisors, looking for a non-controversial site for a new jail since the mid-’70s, wants land to build one here, and the Tustin City Council is ready to fight it to the death. So far, the supervisors have not backed out as the Bureau of Prisons did, but in the past they have always retreated after encountering opposition.

But other county proposals are less incendiary.

* A 180-acre regional park that would preserve the hangars and use parts of them for airplane restoration. The park would include an art museum, miniature golf course, an area for radio-controlled model planes and the usual park greenery and facilities.

* An 18-acre sheriff’s academy, including driver-training track and pistol range.

* Housing for various social services--foster children, drug addicts in rehabilitation, families that have been split up, families that have been reunited, the homeless.

* A commuter rail station and maintenance yard.

A confederation of UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and several school districts has formed to create a business and occupational training center on base land, and Rancho Santiago Community College District is leading the effort. That district’s board is serious enough to have hired an attorney and consultant to help out.

No specific plans have been drawn yet, says the district’s chancellor, Vivian B. Blevins. But the general idea is to educate potential small-business owners and to teach vocations, like health care workers and toxic waste cleanup workers. This would be particularly valuable if some of the base buildings are turned over for homeless housing, she says.

Under the law, housing for homeless gets top priority for base land.

“If they get a piece of the Tustin base, we would like to offer a regional support center and training center,” Blevins says. “They could get a basic education, then move into short-term occupational training--like fitness center technicians--then job placement.”

Under base closure laws, the base need not be disposed of until 1999, although the Marines say they’ll try to accomplish it by 1997.

In the meantime, the city’s task force continues its two-year-old study of how to use the base land. Consultants hired to plan the best use of the land will unveil their proposals this afternoon at a Base Closure Task Force meeting. The public has been invited to argue for its proposals as well.

*

But people should come down to earth, says task force chairman and Mayor Pro Tem Thomas R. Saltarelli.

“Some of that stuff obviously doesn’t have much of a chance of getting in the plan,” he says.

It will be very difficult to preserve the blimp hangars, he says.

“It’s difficult for me to believe it would pencil out for someone to come in, make them earthquake-proof and bring them up to the codes,” he says. “It’s prohibitively costly for them to go to private use.”

An informal survey by the city of its residents showed most people want the hangars to remain, “but if you ask the second question--do you want an assessment district formed to pay for that?--the answer would be no,” Saltarelli says.

He thinks the council will eventually adopt a plan for the base similar to one devised by its consultants, one that includes a hotel, a public golf course and park and the sort of industrial, commercial and residential developments that neighbor the base. The city wants the land to generate tax revenue, he says.

“What will bring this all right back down to earth will be when some developer makes a specific proposal,” he says.

But there are cards that have not yet been played.

The American Land Conservancy in San Francisco is maneuvering to have the National Park Service appropriate some of the base land, then trade it for land at Bolsa Chica wetlands, for which housing tracts are proposed. The conservancy declined to comment on whether serious talks are underway with the landowner, Koll Real Estate Group, but Koll president Richard M. Ortwein says he knows of no negotiations.

“We would be happy to talk to any responsible party,” he said.

And virtually any public or private group assisting the homeless has top priority and lots of time to apply for base land. So far, only the county’s Social Services Agency has expressed interest in homeless housing, but the deadline is years away.

But Saltarelli says he can foresee the ultimate outcome: development of the land with some of it given over to some public uses.

“The prime reason government is closing this base is to reduce military spending,” he says. “They’re not going to just give it away.”