Great Park Board Member Quits

A former Irvine Co. executive resigned abruptly Friday from the public corporation overseeing redevelopment of the closed El Toro Marine base, saying the Orange County Great Park board suffered from wasteful spending and muddled priorities.

Richard G. Sim, instrumental in building the Irvine Spectrum business and shopping complex, spent 18 months on the nine-member board and was the only member with experience in large-scale development. The board includes all five members of the Irvine City Council.

The old Marine base is to be redeveloped as a residential and commercial community surrounding a large park. The property was auctioned in February to one of the nation’s largest home builders.

Sim said the board was centered too much on Irvine, especially considering that the base property is a federal asset, the fate of which should be shaped by more than one city. Sim expressed his concerns in a resignation letter to Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, who chairs the board.

He also expressed concern that four key people who did most of the planning on the redevelopment effort were leaving or had left, including retiring Irvine City Manager Allison Hart and the city’s financial analyst, Brian Meyers, who resigned.

The board also is preparing to award what could be a million-dollar contract to a public affairs firm without competitive bidding, Sim said in his letter. When he protested to fellow board members, he said, he was told that the contract with Forde & Mollrich of Newport Beach didn’t need bids because it was an extension of an earlier contract.

“These issues are being ignored,” Sim said in an interview Monday. “My concern is that we seem to be more interested in PR than we are in planning. When you run a business, you try to do something before you talk about it. We’ve got our priorities all mixed up.”

A spokeswoman for the park board said Sim’s resignation was a surprise.

“We’re very disappointed he’s leaving because he brought so much talent and experience to the board and a perspective that was a little different from the others, and that was healthy,” said Marsha Burgess, assistant to Wally Kreutzen, the corporation’s CEO and Irvine’s assistant city manager.

What happens at the Great Park should be watched by people across Orange County, not just in Irvine, Sim said.

The project could consume up to $1.4 billion in developer fees and taxes paid on formerly public land. The redevelopment plan calls for about 2,500 acres of open space, parkland, roads and other uses to be developed by the city. About 1,200 acres will be commercially developed into homes and businesses; another 1,000 acres will stay in the hands of the federal government for wildlife habitat. At one time, the base was seen as a leading candidate for an international airport.

“It’s not in the public’s interest to have a huge countywide facility controlled for 100 years by a single city council,” Sim said.

Sim also questioned a $600,000 contract for choosing a company to design the public areas of the Great Park, including $125,000 for a search coordinator. He said an official at Lennar Corp., which bought the base for $649.5 million, estimated that his company spends only a couple of thousand dollars to choose a project’s designer.

“My thought is, this is just burning money,” he said. The design should wait until after the city has done a complete property assessment, including about 1,000 sites where toxic contamination is being cleaned up by the Navy, he said.

Burgess said the process for choosing the park’s designer would be substantially different than a private company’s because it would involve focus groups and public outreach, much of which would be overseen by Forde & Mollrich. On Monday, the first of 10 focus groups met, she said.

The board will review Forde & Mollrich’s budget at its May 26 meeting.

Irvine Councilwoman Christina L. Shea, often Sim’s only ally on the park board, said she was sad to see him leave. His replacement will be chosen by the remainder of the board. “I hope we can find someone as experienced as Dick who will be as independent,” she said.