Irvine Co. Homes In on El Toro
For the second time this year, the city of Irvine and the Irvine Co. have shifted plans for new homes onto undeveloped land near flight paths for a proposed El Toro airport, according to interviews with city planners and an environmental study released Thursday.
The plans call for 12,350 homes on land the city wants to annex as part of an 8,150-acre area called the Northern Sphere, which spreads north of the El Toro base past the Foothill toll road. That would increase the city’s size by about a third and add about 35,000 residents to the city of 150,000.
The developer’s plans also call for 6.6 million square feet of research and industrial space, 730,000 square feet of retail and 4,650 acres of open space north of the toll road.
The city has advocated circling the former base with homes, schools and child-care centers, a strategy aimed at enlisting more allies in its fight to keep the airport from being built. The company has never commented on its reasons for adding homes around El Toro. Company officials involved in the development did not respond to telephone calls seeking comment Thursday.
Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said the city won’t be restricted by an airport it doesn’t support and believes won’t be built. The Irvine Co., likewise, has been willing to add residential areas near the base, moving some of 18,000 homes that were approved but not built in other areas of the city.
“There has been a happy coincidence” between the city’s and the Irvine Co.’s vision, Agran said.
But supporters of the proposed commercial airport criticized the city for moving prematurely to put homes near the closed base. A commercial airport at El Toro was approved by voters in 1994, and that hasn’t changed, said David Ellis of the Airport Working Group in Newport Beach.
“Why would they put potentially 35,000 residents in the path of an airport?” Ellis said. “It’s another part of Irvine’s scorched-earth policy on El Toro. For a planned community, they don’t plan very well.”
The area has been zoned for agricultural use for 58 years. Its development had been restricted because of overflights and noise from military jets. The El Toro base closed in July 1999.
The city of Irvine contends that homes are suitable near the former base because it will never be developed. Orange County wants to build a facility that would handle 18.8 million passengers by 2020, making it the second-largest commercial airport in Southern California.
Two years ago, the city began quietly expanding development within commercial zones close to the base, including rezoning the Irvine Co.’s Spectrum business and technology park next to the base to allow construction of homes, schools and child-care centers.
This year, the city approved 2,553 homes southwest of the base near Sand Canyon Avenue and the San Diego Freeway, in an area where housing hadn’t previously been contemplated. That development includes 1.1 million square feet of office and retail space, a 17-acre community park, a fire station and a school on 746 acres of rolling hills and grasslands.
City officials said they are confident voters will approve Measure W, an initiative on the March countywide ballot that would rezone the base for a large urban park and nature preserve. The city then wants to annex the entire 4,700-acre base for future park development and open space.
The homes planned for the northern end of the base fit within a strategy, developed by Agran and his council allies, to generate more opposition and obstacles to an airport.
That strategy hasn’t gone unchallenged. The Airport Land Use Commission, a state-created panel that oversees airport-area development, has continued to restrict building on 14,000 acres around the El Toro base, citing the proposed airport. The limitations affect areas once hit with noise from military jets and in potential crash zones. The most restrictive rules affect a smaller, high-noise zone established while the base was active.
This summer, the commission opposed the city’s plans for the 2,553-home development southwest of the base--the first neighborhood to be built near El Toro since it closed. The city overrode the panel’s recommendation.
Irvine has twice overridden the panel’s warnings against building in the buffer zone. Doing so means the city accepts responsibility for paying any damages for excessive noise or plane crashes in the area should an airport be built.
Officials with the Airport Land Use Commission said Thursday that they hadn’t yet received the Northern Sphere plans for review.
County planning officials have said they have no significant objections to Irvine’s plans as long as the proposed residential areas are outside the high-noise zone.
Residents and others have 45 days to respond to the city’s environmental review of its general plan for the Northern Sphere, with the comment period ending at 5 p.m. Jan. 28. The city and Irvine Co. split the cost of the report, which was presented Thursday night to residents at a community meeting.
