Plans Unveiled for a Big Park at El Toro Base

The largest urban park in Orange County would curl inside the eastern edge of El Toro Marine base with two 18-hole public golf courses, an aviation museum, ball fields and an equestrian center, according to designs released Thursday.

Dubbed Veterans Regional Park, the 770-acre greenbelt replaces plans for an 800-acre business and industrial park, which were dropped from consideration a year ago by county officials preparing for the public use of the 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station.

If approved by the Board of Supervisors as part of the overall plan for El Toro, the new park would supplant 640-acre Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley as the county’s largest urban recreation area. The supervisors are scheduled to act on the plan in December.

Keeping the base in its natural state would reduce previously expected traffic levels and move commercial development into surrounding cities, said Richard Ramella, president of the Planning Center in Costa Mesa, which prepared the park design.

Some officials of cities near El Toro were critical of the earlier plan because it would have set aside land for business parks and other commercial uses. Such development would have robbed those cities of potential commercial revenue, it was felt.

The addition of a large park also neutralized some of the arguments against the county’s base-reuse plan by South County residents opposed to the international airport.

A competing nonaviation plan calls for the development of parkland, homes, a research and development center and a sports stadium; but it would generate more traffic.

“It’s so green, it’s obscene,” Meg Waters, spokeswoman for the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, joked about the new park’s design.

While she said the concept of parkland is sound, she wondered how many people would enjoy playing golf with commercial jets roaring overhead. The northern golf course would be several hundred feet from the end of the eastern runway.

“It gives new definition to the term ‘birdie,’ ” Waters said.

The Marine Corps will leave the base in July and later deed the property to the county. Plans call for about 2,000 acres to be transformed into a commercial airport with the rest zoned for airport-compatible uses. About 1,000 acres would be given to the U.S. Department of the Interior for habitat preservation.

The park, set to open in 2003, would cover about 800 acres. Another 200 would be set aside for agriculture.

A bluff-top site outside the park but on the present Marine base would be used for a southern campus of Cal State Fullerton, where planners hope to house artifacts in an Orange County natural-history museum.

Some business-park development would be allowed near the southern tip of the base at the Santa Ana freeway, next to an 18-hole golf course. Ramella said the freeway frontage is too valuable not to develop.

Planners named the area Veterans Regional Park to honor the contributions of the county’s veterans, El Toro planning manager Bryan Speegle said.

The county will lease to private businesses certain operation, such as horse stables, a general store and a planned aviation museum.

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El Toro Park

The proposed 770-acre Veterans Regional Park inside the easter boundary of El Toro Marine Base would become the county’s largest urban park, if approved in December.

Source: The Planning Center