Hopes Rise for New Marine Corps Center
The U.S. Marine Corps Reserves will remain in east Pasadena unless President Clinton exercises his new line-item veto power in the next few days.
Clinton signed the bill Tuesday to provide $6.69 million to build a new reserve center at the site of the present facility.
But local Marine boosters led by Pasadena Councilman William Paparian said they won’t declare victory until this weekend, when the deadline passes for a line-item veto.
The site on Sierra Madre Boulevard had become so run down that the Marine Corps was considering relocating to March Air Force Base in Riverside County, according to officials.
However, after a more than two-year struggle led by Paparian, the local Navy League and the Chamber of Commerce, the funding to build a new facility was included in the 1998 military construction appropriations bill signed by Clinton. The law funds Defense Department construction projects.
The provision to fund the center won support from U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as well as local Republican congressmen, city officials said.
Paparian, a former Marine whose council district includes the facility, said construction would begin next summer and should take two years. The facility also houses an air defense battery.
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