Tustin Marines to Move to El Toro in ’97

The Marines and helicopters at Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station will move to El Toro instead of San Diego in the summer of 1997, a Marine Corps spokesman said Tuesday.

The Tustin Marines will move to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station until there are hangars available at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego to accommodate the helicopters, El Toro spokesman Lt. Brad Bartelt said.

Bartelt said that moving the Tustin Marines to El Toro will enable the Marine Corps to close the Tustin base two years ahead of schedule. About 2,700 Marines and 118 helicopters currently assigned to Tustin will be transferred to El Toro, Bartelt said.

When El Toro closes in 1999, the helicopters and Marines from Tustin will be transferred again, to San Diego, he added.

He described the planned move from Tustin as “a concept,” but said that Marine officials are not precise about when the move will begin and how long it will take. The move will save between $4 million and $6 million in the long run, Bartelt said.

Although aircraft and equipment will be moved to El Toro, Bartelt said Marines will still continue to be housed at Tustin.

The announcement that the Tustin base will close in 1997 came as no surprise to Tustin city officials, who have been planning the redevelopment of the base around a 1997 closure date.

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Major Gen. Drax Williams, commander of all Marine air bases in the West and Hawaii, said the interim move to El Toro is a money-saving measure.

“It boils down to not having enough money to operate an additional air station when we inherit Miramar from the Navy in the spring of 1997,” Williams said in a prepared statement.

Meanwhile, the migration of Marine units to Miramar continues. Bartelt said the last FA-18 squadron is expected to leave for Miramar next March, leaving only an FA-18 training squadron at El Toro and a few squadrons of air tankers, C-130s and helicopters.

Bartelt said that so far about 900 Marines have been transferred from El Toro to units at Miramar. But because there is not enough military housing available in San Diego, many Marines are commuting between El Toro and Miramar.

Four Tustin officials visited Washington earlier this month to help expedite the closure of Tustin by the summer of 1997. The delegation, led by Mayor Thomas R. Saltarelli, met with Department of Defense officials, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Reps. Robert Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

Washington officials “are really looking at Tustin as being the model base closure,” Councilwoman Tracy Worley said Tuesday. “And so they’re very supportive of our plans to keep things on track and make this an economically viable redevelopment project.”

Worley said she was encouraged by the recent series of meetings in Washington, which were held at Tustin’s request.

Tustin officials are studying several redevelopment options for the base, including a mixture of commercial and light industrial development and housing.