Rally Expected to Energize Airport Foes

Despite a series of crushing setbacks in the past 18 months, South County opponents of a commercial airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station will hold a rally July 9 that organizers hope will attract a record crowd.

Organizers are charging $100 per head and in return ticket holders get to snack on wine and cheese at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point. More than 600 tickets have already been sold.

“This is not happening because we’re marketing geniuses,” said organizer Tristan Krogius of the Homeowners Coalition, a group made up of about 30 South County homeowners associations. “It’s because we hate the airport.”

The event, called “No Jets at the Ritz,” is expected to raise about $60,000. The money will be used to help Taxpayers for Responsible Planning fund its legal challenge to the environmental impact report, which portrays an airport at El Toro as the best reuse for the retiring military base.

City officials and anti-airport groups that have been fighting for years to halt plans to build an international airfield at El Toro see the newly founded Homeowners Coalition as a badly needed infusion of energy.

To date, South County has lost numerous battles--both in and out of court--to stop the airport. Anti-airport leaders say the Ritz-Carlton event is a certain sign that South County communities have the vigor and enthusiasm needed to continue the fight.

“There’s no question that we’re seeing a new spirit that’s absolutely essential in a long, drawn-out campaign,” said Bill Kogerman, executive director of Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, a South County-based citizen’s group leading the fight against the airport.

“It helps us tremendously from a credibility standpoint,” added Susan Withrow, a Mission Viejo councilwoman who is on the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a group made up of South County cities banding together against the airport. “The war was staged when the county approved the [environmental impact report] for the airport, and now we have more allies.”

Started about eight months ago, the Homeowners Coalition mainly draws on homeowners groups in Laguna Beach, Dana Point and Laguna Niguel.

“It’s the first time that homeowners associations have banded together in our part of the world to support a cause like this,” coalition spokesman Jim Davy said. “We’re basically going to be the money raisers” for Taxpayers for Responsible Planning.

Some opponents said the anticipated turnout for the rally is surprising, because many South County residents have failed in the past to get behind the anti-airport fight.

Several cities have conducted polls that show opposition levels ranging from 75% to as high as 90%. But when it came time to vote on Measure S, an anti-airport initiative defeated last year, South County residents stayed home, according to voter turnout records.

In cities like Lake Forest--which would neighbor an airport at El Toro--about 51% of registered voters made it to the ballot box.

Withrow thinks that seeing the county move forward with airport plans has made an airport more reality than concept for residents.

“I think our cause is more focused,” Withrow said. “People are starting to see the very distinct possibility that an airport could be built out there.”

At least one airport supporter is not convinced that the Homeowners Coalition’s participation will make a difference.

“Six hundred people do not a revolution make,” said Clarence J. Turner, a spokesman for the Airport Working Group, a Newport Beach-based group that supports an airport at El Toro as a way to curb airplane traffic at John Wayne Airport.

“We have to give them credit, they have been able to rally people and keep interest alive,” Turner added. “But in spite of that, they are going to lose because this airport will be for the good of the entire county and it makes too much financial sense.”

Coalition organizers know they’ve started late but will attempt to make up for lost time with next week’s rally and future events.

“We’ve been able to get response because our theme is simple,” Davy said. “No jets.”

The enthusiastic demand for tickets caught coalition members by surprise. Originally, the event was going to be held beneath a tent outside the hotel. When tickets began selling, the event was shifted to the Ritz-Carlton’s main ballroom, which holds about 500 people, Krogius said.

“We’re working on how to handle the overflow, but I think it’s a real nice problem to have,” he said.

Don’t expect caviar and black ties at this affair, Krogius said. “We didn’t want any of those extra expenses. We want to send all the money we can to fight the airport.”

Information: (714) 493-5557.