Park Users Call Golf Expansion Plan Off Course

When Bob Richards was 5 years old, his father gave him a model China Clipper airplane with a 1 1/2-foot wingspan.

It looked like the real thing, and in an instant Richards was hooked for life on planes. He took flying lessons at 14, earned his pilot’s license at 16 and flew in the Marine Reserves at 17.

Now 66, Richards satisfies his passion for flight by going to Mile Square Regional Park and sending radio-controlled model planes into the air.

To him and other model plane enthusiasts, a county plan to expand a golf course into the park’s core, the triangle area where the only airstrip for model planes in Orange County lies, jeopardizes a lifelong joy.

They aren’t alone.

Archers who use the park’s target range, soccer players and baseball players, whose facilities also are in the 137-acre triangle, should be worried too, the model plane hobbyists say. So in the last few weeks, the group’s goal has been to whip up opposition to the project.

“The problem right now is that it’s seen as a group of old fuddy-duddies who go and play with their expensive toys that are the ones who really care about this,” said Richards, chairman of Save Mile Square Park Inc. “That’s what we’ve got to change.”

To that end, the group and its supporters have passed out thousands of fliers in the area around the park warning that enjoyment of the park will be curtailed if the golf course is built.

Rick and Beverly Jensen of Santa Ana saw the flier at a Costa Mesa archery shop and now are on the side of the airplane hobbyists.

“I thoroughly appreciate the fact that people like playing golf, because I like playing my own sport,” Beverly Jensen, 45, said. “But the thought that they would take so much of the park away from the people who are really taking advantage of it--well, I think it’s very unfair and an unwise move.”

The Board of Supervisors has said it sympathizes with the hobbyists’ desire to keep the runway. But it unanimously agreed last month that renewing a 30-year-lease with Mile Square Partners, which has operated the Mile Square Golf Course at the park since 1968, and adding holes is in the best interests of the county.

“It’s unfortunate they’re going to lose their spot for their airplanes, but if you put things in perspective, there are maybe 12 to 18 hobbyists flying their planes on a given Saturday,” Supervisor Charles V. Smith said. “It’s quite a spectacular sight, but to hold back developing that huge section of park so a dozen guys can fly their planes doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

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Although the golf course will eliminate the ball fields and airstrip, the plan calls for the fields to be rebuilt in the 25 acres adjacent to the Fountain Valley Recreation Center, also in the park. The runway would not be relocated.

“Actually, there will be a net gain in the numbers of soccer fields and baseball diamonds, and the plan is that we will not close down any of the old fields until the new ones are built so we don’t disrupt the kids,” Smith said.

County officials expect the golf course, which will cost an estimated $7 million to $8 million, will pay the county $2.1 million a year.

But if money is the issue, opponents to the project say the county should charge the operators of the existing golf course more money and leave the triangle alone.

“They miss the point entirely,” Smith said. “The fact that we’re making money off it is incidental. We’re trying to develop the park in a fashion that will make it more usable for a larger cross-section of people.”

Smith and the golf course opponents have corresponded, discussed the project in person and even flown model planes together, but they don’t see eye to eye.

County avowals that the ball fields will be rebuilt are specious when the fine print is examined, the hobbyists say, and they are convinced that ultimately they will block the golf course.

They are ready to take on the county and, if need be, the federal government, which deeded the land to the county. The proposal calls for the golf course to extend into areas regulated by the National Park Service.

County Public Facilities and Resources Department officials hope to complete negotiations for the golf course by Nov. 1.

The triangle portion of the park is entirely under the county’s control. It can avoid federal involvement by developing the golf course solely within that area.

But Smith said he hopes the county and the golf course opponents will come to some accord.

“We’ve offered to try to help them find another place, and if they’d be willing to cooperate with my staff, we might be able to do that,” he said. “But maybe when they see it’s really going to happen, then we’ll all be able to sit down and work something out.”