The Great Debate: Great Park Versus Big Airport

Re “The People Get to Decide,” Commentary, Dec. 2:

Orange County now has an opportunity that is not dictated by its elected officials for developing a park at the former Marine base at El Toro. An opportunity conceived, promoted and financed by its residents.

It would not have been possible without help received from the cities in South County to fight the megabucks of the county and Newport Beach developers. But that does not diminish the grass-roots efforts of so many who have contributed infinitely to reach this point. A new measure on the ballot in March 2002 to change the zoning at El Toro from an airport to open space for a Central Park will finally be presented to voters.

This park would call on the creativity of residents, artists, environmental artists, engineers and landscape architects. That alone is the most exciting thing that could happen to acreage in this county since the planting of orange groves.

Now that the groves have disappeared, let’s re-create the land. Innovative ideas will emerge for reuses of the concrete in the runways. These projects can be offered as working assignments in the art departments of our major universities, where originality and creativity are nurtured. Arboretums can contribute. Ethnic clubs and organizations can participate. A true centrally located park for all to be proud of is finally open for discussion. We can no longer let the tunnel vision of the pro-airport supervisors block the light at the other end.

Mary Schwartz

Santa Ana

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Re “Report Says Great Park Wouldn’t Raise Taxes,” Dec. 1:

The Great Park plan should be renamed the Great Development Plan; it would be more accurate. People believe there will be this huge 4,000-acre park. Well, wake up and smell the developers’ coffee.

If the county supervisors were really looking out for the long-term prosperity and balancing the needs for the entire county, the El Toro airport would be an obvious choice. But the park supporters claim they need yet another large, underutilized regional park in South County. The land gift that Donald Bren just gave creates a several-mile-wide continuous green belt from the ocean all the way to Cleveland National Forest, with El Toro smack in the middle. It further expands the existing buffer zones around El Toro airport, with no neighborhoods underneath any proposed flight paths, especially the V-Plan. The maps shown in the newspaper further illustrate just how big the buffer zone is around El Toro, while there is none around John Wayne.

If Orange County wants another large park, it should not be situated among all the county’s other regional parks. It would be better to turn John Wayne’s more northerly 500 acres into a park (and you could put in a jail too) because it would be about the size of the Great Park after the rest of the land is developed with houses, and keep El Toro with its large buffer zones as the airport that it has been for the last 60 years.

Mark Bury

Newport Beach

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For months, pro-airport forces have spent millions of dollars on fraudulent TV ads and mail pieces insisting the initiative will raise taxes and cost taxpayers billions.

The advertisements were based on the findings of a Newport Beach-funded study deliberately prepared to produce a desired result. Their so-called study was nothing more than a political campaign piece to be used in anti-park propaganda.

Now, an impartial fiscal analysis commissioned by the county says the Orange County Central Park and Nature Preserve Initiative will not raise taxes and dismisses the wild allegations about park costs previously made by pro-airport groups.

Clearly, Newport Beach power brokers will try every trick in the book to derail the enormously popular initiative to shut down John Wayne.

Each generation creates a legacy, something it leaves behind for future generations. What will our legacy be?

On March 5, the people of Orange County will decide.

Sergio Prince

Laguna Hills

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Though the impartial auditor’s report on the Great Park initiative spelled out projected economic benefits of the Great Park versus an airport, it apparently didn’t bother to examine quality-of-life issues.

For example, how much more noise, pollution and traffic will be generated by an airport versus a park? The answer to that question is obvious. Where are the low-wage baggage handlers, taxi drivers and parking attendants going to live? They certainly won’t be able to afford Orange County housing prices, which will further congest the Riverside Freeway and any other route leading to cheaper housing in the Inland Empire. It seems we’re left with a clear choice. We can have a huge airport in the middle of the county, with its 24-hour noise, traffic and pollution, or we can gradually develop a world-class public park.

Kevin L. Cook

Ladera Ranch

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Does anyone really believe there will ever be a Great Park? Do the anti-airport strategists who dreamed up the Great Park ploy really believe it, or even care, as long as the airport is defeated?

Even if the Great Park passes, when the taxpayers are confronted with the terrific costs for the park as proposed by the strategists, it will not be built. If you question this, just suppose the ballot reads “Great Park and Airport.” After the airport was up and running, some of the revenue from it could go toward building the park. But would that pass? Probably not, if the anti-airport strategists have their way. The developers will most likely have their way.

Hey, maybe that is the plan.

John Gardiner

Costa Mesa

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Do Orange County citizens realize the hypocrisy of the Newport Beach City Council, Newport Beach’s Airport Working Group, Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, the Orange County Regional Airport Authority and the county’s own majority on the Board of Supervisors of Smith, Silva and Coad continuing to try to sell the public on the need for an 18-million to 30-million-passenger airport at El Toro while working behind the scenes to extend the utilization caps on John Wayne at about 60% of its true capacity?

M. Chieffo

Lake Forest

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Re “Auditor Sees No Tax Hike Under Great Park Plan,” Dec. 1:

Supervisor Cynthia P. Coad worries, “Where’s the money going to come from?” and “What are we going to cut out?” to cover the $19-million cost (spread over the next 18 years) for maintaining a Great Park at the closed El Toro Marine base.

That should be a no-brainer for the supervisors. Where did they “find” the millions they have already spent trying to force an unwanted, unsafe and unneeded airport upon a disapproving voter majority?

Ed Winslow

Lake Forest

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Re “Pro-Airport Consultant Skews Great Park Facts,” Letters, Nov. 25:

Jim Corbett asks, “Wasn’t John Wayne built long before most of the homes in Newport?” In fact, the vast majority of neighborhoods and homes under the John Wayne flight path in Newport, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana Heights, Orange and Tustin were built before the first commercial jets (starting with two per day) took off.

South County, on the other hand, grew up around the existing El Toro Marine base and its far noisier military jets. It is in large part the growth of South County that has necessitated reopening El Toro as a commercial airport.

Corbett claims that El Toro airport would cause “billions of lost property values.” In fact, homes in our tract, just 21/2 miles from the airport and directly under the departing planes, now sell for about 20 times their original early 1960s (pre-jet) purchase price.

El Toro with its long runways and an unprecedented 14,000-acre noise and safety buffer zone, is the only practical site for that second airport. Maybe it’s not the “Newporters” who are “changing the rules.”

Joseph Mulroy

Newport Beach