Irvine’s Plan Could Divide Airport Foes

A decision this week by Irvine to spend $4.5 million promoting a “great park” at the former El Toro Marine base could trigger an expensive rift in the South County coalition fighting the county’s plans for an airport at the base.

The city’s park plan is the third non-airport proposal to be floated from South County in the past two years and the second in the past year by the city.

The plan envisions about half of the 4,700-acre base transformed into a vast central park, with the rest used for museums, cultural centers, a sports complex and farm land. Maintenance of the property would be paid from agricultural leases and a mix of private and public cultural funds.

The changing nature of nonairport alternatives for El Toro has frustrated some in the airport fight. Supervisor Todd Spitzer said South County should unite behind a single nonairport plan to counter the airport.

“I’ve told South County, you’ve got to make up your minds,” Spitzer said this week.

Park supporters said it is superior to other nonairport proposals.

“It will give people from La Habra to San Clemente an escape from the noise, traffic and congestion that plague our daily lives,” Irvine Mayor Christina Shea said in voting for the plan, which received unanimous council support this week. “The great park will enhance our quality of life; an airport will degrade it. That’s the bottom line.”

Several activists fighting the airport declined to comment publicly this week on Irvine’s new plan, saying they didn’t want to criticize their antiairport colleagues. But privately they doubted the great park could be built without some public subsidy, which could make it a tough sell to voters.

Len Kranser, spokesman for the antiairport Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities, said he agrees with Spitzer. At this point, he said, the race is between Irvine’s great park and a plan promoted by other South County cities that mixes homes, commercial space and an urban park.

“Irvine and the rest of [the antiairport cities] haven’t always been in sync, but I don’t feel badly that we have two viable nonairport plans,” Kranser said.

Airport supporters aren’t as circumspect about Irvine’s new effort.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Chuck Smith said the amount committed by Irvine to sell the great park is about the same as the budget deficit of the Irvine Unified School District.

“They may have to lay off teachers in Irvine, but the city’s willing to spend millions of tax dollars on a slick public relations campaign,” Smith said.

Airport booster Bruce Nestande of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy called Irvine’s plan “an obscene amount of taxpayer dollars for political propaganda.”

The great park concept grew out of a flood of mailers sent by Irvine countywide last year asking residents what they wanted at El Toro. The mailers were sent at the same time voters were asked to approve Measure F, which mandates a countywide vote before the airport can be built. Measure F passed with 67% of the vote.

Among the 100,000 surveys returned, the park emerged with the most public support, said Newport Beach consultant Stu Mollrich, whose firm helped devise the strategy. A separate query of 300 Orange County business leaders yielded similar results. People value Orange County’s quality of life above the desire for another airport, Mollrich said.

But the great park is contrary to higher-density development proposed by the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, an eight-city coalition fighting the airport that includes Irvine.

The authority has spent about $3 million in public funds promoting its Millennium Plan development for El Toro, unveiled in March 1998.

As the county’s plans have shrunk, so have those of opponents, believing they had less need to counter an airport’s claimed economic benefits.

If money is the bottom line, the great park option couldn’t come at a better time. The county is experiencing an unparalleled economic boom with all-time low unemployment. In 1994, when the airport was approved by voters, the economy was just emerging from a multiyear recession, making its message of job creation more attractive.

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Times Correspondent Eric C Sanitate contributed to this report