NEWPORT BEACH : City Joins Alternative El Toro Reuse Panel

The City Council has voted 6-0 to join the Orange County Regional Airport Authority.

The organization is made up of several North County cities trying to influence the future of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, scheduled to close by 1999.

The group was organized by Garden Grove, Los Alamitos and Stanton last summer to monitor the base conversion planning and support development of a commercial airport on the 4,700-acre base.

Newport Beach is the first city to join the group since its inception.

The airport authority “will be an advocate of conversion (of El Toro Marine Base) to a commercial airport,” Newport Beach City Manager Kevin Murphy said at a council meeting.

The council chose Mayor Clarence J. Turner as representative to the organization and Councilman John Hedges, an airline pilot, as alternate.

The regional airport authority is trying to decide whether it will just monitor the work of the county’s El Toro agency or submit a rival redevelopment plan to the Defense Department, which will make the final decision on civilian use of the base.

Anaheim is also considering joining the regional airport authority.

The county’s nine-member El Toro Reuse Planning Authority consists of the five county supervisors, three Irvine City Council members and one from Lake Forest. Although Newport Beach and Anaheim had once been proposed for membership on the planning board, they were left off under the plan finally approved by the Board of Supervisors.

North County cities and others not part of the top board of directors have been invited to join a 50-member executive council of the reuse planning authority. That panel will also draw members from the county, representatives from seven unincorporated areas of the South County, seven business groups and four universities.