County Finds It’s Stuck in an El Toro Quagmire

The picture of an El Toro airport that seemed so clear when voters gave it a slender stamp of approval five years ago now is muddied from miscues and mistakes that have angered airport supporters and severely delayed plans.

Last week, the pro-airport majority on the Orange County Board of Supervisors signaled its displeasure--and its readiness to remove the planning process from county hands. It voted 3 to 2 to seek membership in a multi-government agency, which could take over planning and construction of a new airport.

The scene was much rosier in 1994 when the county promised a major international airport at El Toro that would act as an engine to propel the local economy and establish Orange County as a destination on the worldwide map.

Since then, however, airport plans have taken so many detours that even supporters aren’t sure which road will lead to opening Southern California’s second-largest airfield. Public perception remains mired in an unshakable shroud of skepticism. Ask people today about the fate of the 4,700-acre Marine base, and the answer is dripping with doubt.

“The way things are going, I don’t think it’ll be built in my lifetime,” said Ted Hoffman, a stockbroker and pilot who lives in Irvine.

No better symbol exists for the community’s fractured psyche over El Toro than the perpetual 3-2 votes that the county Board of Supervisors has taken to inch along efforts toward airport construction.

The dissonance over El Toro planning has spread throughout Southern California, where federal, state and regional officials are trying to figure out how the area can absorb an expected doubling of airline passengers by 2020. In Los Angeles, where residents are battling a 50% expansion of Los Angeles International Airport, civic leaders are scornful about El Toro delays, saying Orange County has to do its share to help serve future regional demand.

Local county officials blame challenges by airport foes for the wave of delays that have called into question an announced 2005 opening date for an international airport that would serve 28.8 million passengers a year by 2020.

But business leaders blame the supervisors and county planners.

“I think it’s clear that they oversold the airport from the very beginning,” said one business leader close to pro-airport supervisors. “The problem is that instead of approaching it as a public works project, they approached it as a public relations project.”

Indeed, both sides have spent more than $6 million altogether since 1994 in feverish, but so far futile, efforts to sway public opinion.

Polls over the past three years show no change in views: The most recent poll found that 46% of the residents questioned said they opposed an airport at El Toro, while 42% said they favored it, and the rest remain undecided.

In a shift in focus last month, Orange County businessman George L. Argyros, the largest private donor to the pro-airport cause, retained former U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor in Washington to lobby the federal government. Argyros considers the top priority to be making sure the Navy conveys the base for an airport--without any further glitches.

The planning process has suffered many setbacks so far.

The major casualty occurred this year: Cargo flights that supervisors had promised would begin July 3--the day after the base closed--have yet to materialize. The main reason: County officials have been unable to secure a master lease with the Navy to manage the property in the Marines’ absence. The base isn’t expected to be deeded to the county for a year or two.

Cargo flights were intended as both practical and psychological landmarks: Supporters expected the flights to provide immediate economic benefits as well as cement the county’s plans for a future airport.

County officials today have no idea when cargo flights will begin. An application will be filed with the Navy in coming weeks for a master lease, but the proposed agreement contains no plans for any flights.

“Cargo is in the future, I just can’t give a date,” said Michael L. Lapin, who took over management of the county’s El Toro program office in July.

In another setback, top county officials missed their own optimistic pledge--written and signed by them in 1996--to win the Navy’s blessing for an airport by last January. That action won’t come now until next spring at the earliest.

In addition, a plan to rent the officer’s club for banquets and weddings unraveled after the Navy refused to permit the sale of alcohol. Before the Navy will allow such sales, a state agency must approve an agreement to turn over police authority on the base from the federal government to the state. A hearing is scheduled in December before the state Lands Commission.

The county has been left with managing a handful of community services at the base, including the golf course, horse stables, recreational-vehicle storage lot and the officer’s club, which recently reopened for lunches without a bar.

*

There have been other retreats from once-trumpeted elements of the airport plan. They include a proposal to pair the airport with an ambitious commercial and research-and-development center, an idea scrapped after it failed to spark much interest. In its place came the so-called lean and green airport designed as the centerpiece of a rambling regional park with two golf courses.

Late last month, pro-airport Supervisor Cynthia Coad threw another curve by suggesting that the airport be built to handle no more than 18.8 million passengers a year, the number it is expected to serve by 2010. If a future Board of Supervisors wants to expand the terminal, it could do so later, she said.

“It gets to a point that the people of Orange County can’t get a handle on what we’re talking about,” said Meg Waters, spokeswoman for the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority. The authority, a coalition of eight South County cities, is pushing a plan for construction of homes and office and commercial buildings at the base.

“You’d figure that five years into it, they’d have a rock-solid idea of what they wanted,” she said. “What this shows us is that they don’t know what they’re doing and they’re grasping at straws because they have no consensus for this airport. They keep changing the plan to try to get what they think will bring them more support.”

Airport backers argue that this very evolution is what good planning is all about.

Had the airport proposal been carved in stone before the planning process started, they say, residents would have been denied the opportunity to discuss and streamline the plan.

“It’s important to do good planning so you get it right the first time,” said David Ellis, a consultant with the Airport Working Group, which supports an El Toro airfield.

Troubled attempts elsewhere to transform military air bases to commercial use--like those at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino and George Air Force base near Victorville--are serving as examples to county planners, Ellis said.

A new airport at Norton “remains a very large weed patch” that is $40 million in the red, and the organization behind the new airport at George “is just now getting its act together,” he said. Both facilities were hampered by arguments over who would develop the property and what kind of airport should emerge.

While El Toro supporters worry that the planning process is fraught with missteps and delays, airport foes see it as the county’s effort to build an airport at all costs, regardless of opposition from nearby residents.

The next year will be critical for both sides.

Current schedules call for a draft report of the county’s environmental review, required by state law, to be released in November.

A final report is due in May, after which supervisors are expected to give the airport their final approval.

Critics will have 60 days to respond to the draft report’s analyses of noise, pollution and traffic from the airport, as well as the effect on the region’s economy. The draft report also will present the county’s evaluation of South County’s nonaviation plan.

South County cities, however, are banking on voters to pass an anti-airport initiative in March. The measure would complicate the process further by requiring a two-thirds public vote to approve building or expanding airports, large jails near homes and hazardous-waste landfills.

The Navy is conducting its own environmental review, which should be finished by May. The Navy then will sign what is called a record of decision officially declaring the base surplus land and convey the property for the county’s designated reuse.

The Federal Aviation Administration also is conducting its own review to decide if the proposed flight patterns and operations of the new airport can be accomplished safely.

*

Along the way, airport foes are pledging to challenge every unfavorable decision and to file lawsuits, if necessary. But supporters of the El Toro airport are undaunted.

“It took 17 years to get the San Joaquin Hills toll road built, and there were people fighting it at every turn,” Ellis noted. “This will get done.”