Irvine’s Buyer-Beware Homes

While Southern California grapples with its need for new airport capacity, worried neighborhoods are strategizing to slow or stop the expansions, fearing increased traffic, noise and pollution. In Irvine, there’s a new twist. The city is attempting to build a new housing development very near the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, in the belief that the commercial airport planned on the site will never be built. Of course, building houses so close to the flight path is guaranteed to fuel anti-airport fervor.

The city tonight will begin considering a plan for more than 2,500 homes so close to the base that the state Airport Land Use Commission warns against putting child-care facilities and hospitals on part of the development. City leaders say they have no qualms about approving houses so near El Toro.

True, a ballot initiative next year to approve a giant park instead of an airport at the base is leading solidly in public opinion polling. However, polls can shift and the ballot initiative might not be the last word, especially if it gives rise to lawsuits. So why not wait? Lake Forest, which also opposes the airport, is refraining from approving new schools and homes in areas it controls near the base until it knows more.

Irvine has an even bigger project in the works close to the far end of the base, where planes would take off. Obviously, people moving into these areas won’t be entitled to much sympathy if they bet the wrong way and get jetliners instead of a park view.

Orange County does need to resolve the future of this base so that Irvine and other cities can get on with their lives. In the meantime, let the planners and potential buyers beware.