Park Backers Take Initiative

Officials representing nine South County cities will unveil today their latest weapon in a seven-year war to defeat plans by Orange County to build an airport at the retired El Toro Marine base: A March 2002 ballot measure to replace the airfield with a park.

In the last three years, Irvine has spent $5 million to develop and promote what has become a united South County alternative for the 4,700-acre Marine base: Orange County Central Park, built around an ambitious plan for sports fields, museums, botanical gardens and open space.

At a meeting at 7 tonight at Irvine City Hall, South County city officials who also serve on the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority will join anti-airport community leaders to roll out the new measure.

“We’re now in complete agreement that the time is at hand to repeal [the airport] and replace it with a land-use plan for El Toro that is popular from one end of Orange County to another,” Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, a key developer of the plan, said Friday.

The initiative--the third since the airport was narrowly approved by voters in 1994--could write the final chapter on El Toro, which closed in July 1999. The federal government is expected to turn over the base within six months after supervisors approve a long-awaited environmental review of the project, scheduled for late September.

Once the report is certified and the base is turned over, it will be much tougher, both sides agree, to change plans for the property from the airport to something else.

“If they lose this, it’s over,” said David Ellis, a consultant for the Newport Beach-based Airport Working Group, a leading proponent of an El Toro airport.

“This ought to be the end of the debate,” Paul Eckles, ETRPA’s executive director, agreed. “After this one, it ought to be clear that we should move on and go forward with a great nonaviation use for the property.”

Residents throughout Orange County got a glimpse of what a new Central Park might look like in brochures mailed this month, paid for by Irvine. The city created a redevelopment agency for the base in anticipation of stopping the airport and annexing the property.

Though the map includes specific park features, the initiative itself won’t be so detailed. Instead, it will include language replacing airport and “airport-compatible” zoning with such generic uses as public/institutional, open space and recreation.

The park’s name also has been changed from the “Great Park” to “Orange County Central Park”--a move emphasizing the park’s Central County location, supporters said, instead of being perceived as another amenity for park-rich South County.

Veterans on both sides of the airport war have been preparing for the latest initiative for months.

Though it will be submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the board’s pro-airport majority is unlikely to place the measure on the ballot. Supervisors have allocated $5 million through June 2002 for an informational campaign on the airport issue--spending that has been challenged by South County cities.

With that in mind, a volunteer army has been forming to begin gathering signatures next month to qualify the measure for the March 2002 ballot by voter mandate. South County groups are raising money to pay for the effort and the upcoming campaign.

Organizers have trod this path before: They led the petition drive for last year’s successful qualification and passage of Measure F, which called for two-thirds voter approval before the county could build airport projects, large jails and hazardous-waste landfills near homes. Measure F was overturned by a judge in December; that ruling is being appealed.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said he’s pleased that the latest initiative includes a requirement that the park be developed without tax funds. Separate features of the park can and should be developed by private funding, he said. Irvine also has been paying former state legislator Mike Roos for more than a year to seek state grants to help develop the park.

“People aren’t going to see new taxes levied,” Spitzer said. “The ability to develop the park will be based on the ability to generate revenue. It’s not like laying sod, where everything’s there overnight. You have to develop the property over a period of years.”

Airport supporters see the possible costs of developing the new park as its Achilles’ heel. The development of such a vast facility will require public funds for irrigation and maintenance, they said, as well as building such features as the sports fields, museums and botanical gardens.

Currently, the federal government pays about $5 million a year for maintenance at the base, most of which is closed to the public.

Agran said the park plan is ambitious but was developed from surveys submitted by more than 100,000 households countywide.

“It’s a monumental effort,” he said, noting that Central Park in New York City is 843 acres and Balboa Park is San Diego is 1,400 acres. “It’s a remarkable undertaking and one that seems to enjoy great popular support at this point.”