City Limits Housing Offer to Coast Guard

The city will withdraw an offer of $500,000 to the Coast Guard after one month if the agency does not abandon its request for housing at Tustin’s Marine base, officials said this week.

City officials, concerned that the Coast Guard’s request for 55 acres of land and housing on the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station would threaten the city’s reuse plans, had offered the money in March. They proposed that the Coast Guard use the funds to rehabilitate other surplus housing property in Palos Verdes and San Pedro.

“We’ve kept this on the table for a long time,” Councilman Thomas R. Saltarelli said. “It doesn’t make sense to leave it there.”

So far, the Coast Guard has not dropped its request, and officials from the Navy, which has final say over base’s reuse, have indicated that they may stand by the plan.

If that happened, Tustin officials said, it would throw into disarray the city’s plans for the base--expected to close by 1999--and deny the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential tax revenue.

The city’s plans for the 1,600-acre base call for a mix of commercial and residential development, as well as schools and parks.

The Coast Guard has said it is requesting the 55 acres, which include a tract of 274 housing units, to house its personnel and their families. Tustin officials have suggested alternatives that would be closer to the Coast Guard’s Long Beach headquarters.

Council members said this week they hope the 30-day deadline will spur the Coast Guard to make a decision.

“This $500,000 might do the trick if we allow it to remain on the table for 30 days,” Saltarelli said.

Mayor Tracy Wills Worley added: “There’s a lot of activity in Washington right now. I’m hoping that we’ll have a decision before 30 days.”