Irvine Takes Over From Coalition on 2002 Measure to Kill El Toro Plan

The city of Irvine has assumed control of a proposed ballot measure aimed at repealing plans for an airport at El Toro, nudging out a coalition of South County cities that had hoped to steer the future of the retired Marine base.

Last year’s anti-airport Measure F, which passed with 67% of the vote, was written by the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority that includes Irvine and eight other South County cities. But those involved say the authority has quietly stepped aside to let Irvine create the new initiative, a significant shift in the often fractious anti-airport coalition.

For three years ETRPA pushed for its Millennium Plan, a medium-sized park plus commercial development and new homes at the 4,700-acre base. The plan pushed by Irvine, though, would replace an airport approved by voters in 1994 with a “great park” that planners hope someday will rival New York City’s Central Park and Balboa Park in San Diego.

Irvine’s lawyers want to place the measure, which is expected to be unveiled next month, on the March 2002 ballot.

The plan, which could take decades to fully implement, omits new commercial or residential development.

But it would refurbish existing base buildings, according to those who have seen draft copies of the new measure.

Not many people have.

“I haven’t seen it,” said ETRPA executive director Paul Eckles. “I don’t even have a copy in my computer.”

Many of those involved said Irvine was given the green light because they didn’t feel like battling over what becomes of El Toro, as long as it doesn’t have runways.

“There has been over the past several years a great deal of ill feeling on this whole issue,” said Tristan Krogius, an anti-airport activist from Dana Point.

Irvine’s plan “is not going to permit an airport use and that’s all anybody really cares about,” he said. “I think everybody is comfortable with it as long as they’re crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. It’s the only thing our people have insisted on, that the thing is bulletproof” to a legal challenge.

Len Kranser, who operates an anti-airport Web page, said Irvine officials argued convincingly that the city’s proximity to the base earned it the right to control what might be built there. That extended to drafting the new initiative, he said.

Much credit for the new-found detente goes to the persistence of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, who created the great-park concept and pushed its refinement through a city-paid campaign--at a cost of nearly $4 million annually.

Multiple full-color surveys arrived at households across the county for more than a year asking residents what type of facilities they would want at the proposed park. The brochures were conceived by Irvine’s consultants, Stu Mollrich and Arnold Forde, who ran pro-airport campaigns in 1994 and 1996 until Agran snatched them away in 1999.

The feedback suggested people didn’t want an airport--and wanted more park, not less, Agran said.

“We’re talking about a general plan that certainly will be dominated by public uses, the dominant public use being a great park that itself incorporates all kinds of public uses,” he said, listing botanical gardens, athletic facilities, wildlife and native habitat areas, a “great library,” a museum mall for science and history, and art museums.

Under state law, if the park plan makes it onto the ballot--and both sides say that’s a given--city and county governments then must stop spending money arguing the issue, turning the lobbying over to private advocacy groups.

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With that in mind, Orange County’s pro-airport majority on the Board of Supervisors approved $5 million this month for a public-information campaign on the airport. The campaign will be run by the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, a 13-city pro-airport coalition. Executive Director Art Bloomer is expected to receive approval this week to begin negotiating with public-relations firms.

The Newport Beach City Council followed suit last week earmarking $3.7 million for two pro-airport groups--Airport Working Group and Citizens for Jobs and the Economy.

Officials argued that the money--the most significant such investment to date by pro-airport forces--will be spent to provide information about the airport, not advocacy.

For years, South County activists have acknowledged that any strategy for stopping the airport required repealing the 1994 vote, which created airport zoning for the base. In December, a Los Angeles County judge made the path clearer by overturning Measure F, ruling it unconstitutional. Superior Court Judge S. James Otero said that if voters wanted to stop an airport at El Toro, they should repeal the earlier vote.

In the weeks that followed Otero’s ruling--which is under appeal--anti-airport groups agreed to expand a division of labor approved during the Measure F campaign, letting ETRPA focus on attacking the county’s airport plans while Irvine studied alternatives for base redevelopment.

The double-barrel approach weakened public support for the airport, which passed in 1994 with 51% of the vote. Opinion polls conducted last year, including the Los Angeles Times Poll, showed support for an airport slipping to around 35%.

The next challenge will be to persuade voters to change course on El Toro.

Dave Ellis, a consultant for the Airport Working Group, said county taxpayers won’t be as partial to the park if they believe it could cost them to maintain and operate it.

“How deep are the taxpayers of Orange County willing to dig in their own pockets so Irvine can have a park?” he said, striking a likely theme for an upcoming campaign. “We just have a different view of the county’s needs.”

Bring it on, Krogius said.

“Everybody’s together on the public uses and a great park is the smartest way to go,” he said. “There’s no dissension on that point at all.”