The Great Debate Over Park Plans

* First, those opposed to a civil airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station ran out as their alternate the Millennium Plan. When it was discovered that it generated more automobile traffic than the county’s airport plan, they shelved it in favor of Millennium Plan II.

Millennium Plan II decreased the size of the commercial area and increased the park and open space to over 2,500 acres, more than half of El Toro’s total of 4,700 acres. Traffic problem solved. However, when a Millennium Plan II spokesperson was asked how much all this park and open space was going to cost, the spokesperson didn’t know and could only say that developers of the reduced commercial area would be required to pay a “park fee” that would pay for initial development; that maintenance costs of the park and open space would be paid by city of Irvine tax revenues; and that it all depended on the city annexing the former Marine base. Whether prospective dealers would stand still for what would surely be astronomical costs was left unanswered.

Now, Irvine politicians have dropped Millennium Plan II and are pushing the entire base as some kind of a great park. Again, what all this would cost is left to the imagination.

On the other hand, a civil airport at El Toro would not cost taxpayers and developers a penny. It would be paid for by private investors and users of the airport.

The original Millennium Plan didn’t make sense. Millennium Plan II made less sense. And this new 4,700-acre great park makes no sense at all.

ALYCE CONNERS

Corona del Mar

* I suggest we take the former base at El Toro and make a grand park out of it, not like our other Orange County parks, but on the scale of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Central Park in New York or Prospect Park in Brooklyn. If properly managed and with the features of the above-mentioned parks, it could provide jobs as well as income to the county and be a treasure to its citizens.

HARRY B. COHEN

Laguna Beach

* In the last two weeks my mailbox has been bulging with high-gloss brochures from South County extolling the Millennium Plan/great park at El Toro. The brochures tell us that the initial Millennium Plan won first place honors for excellence.

In spite of this award, the plan has gone through a drastic overhaul from the initial one advocating museums, sports arenas and a convention center. When this award-winning plan was discovered to create more traffic and pollution problems than an airport, it was revised to create a little more open space. There is now a version that creates a great park, apparently all 4,700 acres, to rival the great parks of the world.

Cost has never been mentioned, so I wrote to my supervisor, Tom Wilson, an avowed airport opponent, and asked about the cost of the Millennium/great park plan. In a letter response, Wilson stated, “However, the costs of the Millennium Plan are essentially a wash with those involved in constructing a major airport.” Since South County has repeatedly informed everybody of how the airport costs have doubled to $2.9 billion, I would think the great park advocates would inform the county taxpayers what they are in for.

After all, unlike airports which are financed by revenue bonds and user fees, parks are financed by local taxpayer dollars.

JOSEPH E. STASCH

Newport Beach