Touching All the Bases

From a distance, the meandering residential streets at the former Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin look much like the sleepy tree-lined cul-de-sacs of so many thriving master-planned communities in Orange County.

Handsome duplexes, townhouses and apartment clusters fan out from a beckoning neighborhood playground. Baseball fields are a short walk away.

But like the rest of the former military base, the dwellings that officers and their families once called home have been vacant since July. The yards and ball fields are pocked with foreboding rodent holes. A loose rain gutter dangles perilously from one roof. The landscaping is overgrown. Broken windows have been boarded up but not replaced.

With the long, slow death of the base finally over some eight years after the facility was first targeted for closure, Tustin city officials who are eager to revitalize the property say the conversion process is showing signs of rigor mortis.

Despite a new federal law that was meant to ease the transfer of closed military bases back to local governments, Tustin leaders claim that the Navy has stonewalled their attempts to assume control of the 1,584-acre property. Even efforts to reach an agreement that would enable the city to take care of the buildings on the base have faltered.

Frustrated city officials took their complaints to Washington two weeks ago to meet with lawmakers, Defense representatives and administration officials.

With unconcealed hostility, Tustin leaders say the Navy is stalling to pressure the city into taking on financial responsibility for some of the environmental cleanup at the base, and because it doesn’t want to relinquish the potentially lucrative property to the city.

It’s a pattern that’s playing out nationwide, according to Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a nonprofit public-interest organization in San Francisco that tracks the military’s effect on the environment and the economy.

“These bases are not moving. It’s an incredible embarrassment to the Department of Defense,” Bloom said. “From a national perspective, they are squandering the economic value of these properties and doing a disservice to the entire country.”

Bloom said the properties that transfer most easily to the private sector are those with uses similar to their military purpose, such as the Long Beach Naval Station, which will be used as a cargo terminal by a major South Korean shipping line.

When cities want bases clean enough to sustain housing, the military often balks, he said.

Navy spokeswoman Jeanne Light, of the Southwest Division Naval Facilities Engineering Command in San Diego, denied the agency is trying to evade cleanup responsibilities and said the potential economic value of the property is not a factor in its consideration of Tustin’s request.

Tustin’s exasperation has an ironic twist.

While opposing visions for the former Marine base at El Toro have been a source of controversy and high political drama in Orange County, plans for the Tustin base were long considered a model of community cooperation and support.

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Redevelopment plans call for a master-planned community that would include a campus of the South Orange County Community College District, 9.2 million square feet of commercial and industrial space, 4,600 homes, a public golf course, city and county parks, a day-care center, law enforcement training facilities and a homeless shelter. Tustin planners estimate the community would create 23,000 permanent jobs.

“[The base] was targeted for closure, and eight years later we still can’t get a transfer,” said Tustin Mayor Tracy Wills Worley. “We’re missing a great opportunity with this economy to get the base going. We’re not getting anywhere with the Navy, so we decided to take it to Congress.”

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) agreed with city leaders. “I’m strongly supportive of the Tustin plan and I am dismayed that the Navy is dragging its feet,” Cox said.

Light said the Navy is moving as quickly as it can to analyze the city’s proposals in light of the guidelines signed into law last fall.

“We have a law to comply with,” Light said. “That’s not dragging our feet, that’s just doing our jobs.”

Rather than buying former military bases from the government, the 1999 law enables communities to receive the land at no cost, so long as the proceeds from any land sales are used to support job creation and economic development in their communities. Money not reinvested within seven years would go back to the Department of Defense.

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Tustin’s plan would set aside 30% of the base for civic uses, and put the rest on the market. Some homes would be renovated, while older ones would be demolished and redeveloped. The city estimates that infrastructure improvements would cost $185 million, which Tustin would pay for with proceeds from land sales.

City leaders claim their plan complies with the regulations, and they can’t understand what more there is for the Navy brass to study.

“We have kind of taken the gloves off,” said City Manager William A. Huston. “The Navy has made a conscious decision to stonewall the city. They either don’t understand or they’re choosing to ignore what the president has said, what the Congress has said and even the policy decisions by the secretary of Defense.”

Light contends that it has only been a month since her agency received from the city all of the information it needs to evaluate Tustin’s proposal for a no-cost transfer.

The city is seeking the base at no cost “on the grounds that its reuse plan creates new jobs and commercial redevelopment,” Light said in a written statement. “The Navy is analyzing the city’s financial and other support for these contentions” to determine whether they satisfy the law and Department of Defense policy.

Light said the Navy’s Southwest Division will complete its analysis by summer, when it will be sent to the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Headquarters in Washington, and then to the secretary of the Navy for review and decision. She said the final step in the required environmental studies, a record of decision from the Navy, will also be issued this summer.

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The base’s environmental status is another bone of contention. In a briefing document distributed during their trip to Washington this month, Tustin leaders claim the Navy is using “coercion techniques” to suggest that the property transfer could be accelerated if the city would assume responsibility for the cleanup.

“They’re going to starve the bases for cleanup money, and they will delay the plans until the community is so frustrated they will take [the property] on the military’s terms,” said Bloom, who has served on the redevelopment authority agencies of three closed military bases in Northern California. “It’s an extremely cynical and nasty process.”

The Navy denied it is pressuring Tustin to take over the cleanup. Early transfer of former military properties “has been used by other base-closure communities to great advantage,” according to Light’s statement. “Its purpose is to advance redevelopment, not to relieve the Navy of its statutory responsibility” to clean up polluted property.

Assistant City Manger Christine A. Shingleton said that more than patience is at stake.

Some $3 million in federal grants for infrastructure and construction could be jeopardized. The Orange County Rescue Mission has raised nearly $17 million for a 192-bed homeless shelter that would house families in renovated former barracks, but the agency can’t begin construction on dining and job-training facilities until the property is transferred.

The South Orange County Community College District has hired a vice chancellor to start a technology-focused college in the abandoned barracks and administrative buildings, but has no students or professors.

And, as interest rates rise and the dormant buildings show increasing signs of decay, the property’s market value is at risk.

Shingleton said there isn’t much more the city can do, short of drawing attention to the delays and proceeding with what development activities it can until an agreement is reached.

Ten developers have submitted proposals for a 248-acre commercial parcel on the base. A residential development on a different swath of the land drew 22 proposals.

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City’s Plan

Frustrated at the slow pace of the property’s transfer, Tustin leaders continue to push their plans to redevelop the former military base within the city limits. A look a the city’s plan:

Source: City of Tustin