Navy Makes No El Toro Promises

Navy officials arrived in Orange County on Thursday with pledges of cooperation but no promises about what will happen at the former El Toro Marine base after the land is sold to private buyers.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy H.T. Johnson and the U.S. General Services Administration’s Gordon Creed spent the morning meeting individually with Orange County supervisors and the afternoon with Irvine city officials. The Navy hopes to have its plan to dispose of the property in place by May 31. Irvine hopes to annex the base early next year.

Johnson told supervisors that he would honor base zoning approved last month by Orange County voters that calls for parkland and limited development; that vote killed the county’s plans for an airport. But he gave no guarantees about existing activities at the base, including stables, a golf course, recreational vehicle storage and agricultural leases.

The Navy has said it will honor subleases in effect on March 5, but only a lease with Bordier’s Nursery falls into that category.

“They just want to get the base off their hands,” Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad said. “They have no idea how it’s going to be parceled or what the price is going to be. If [someone] wants the land for agriculture, they’re going to have to buy it. If they want to have horse stables, they’ll have to buy it.”

Johnson, who declined to be interviewed, acknowledged that the courts could overturn last month’s vote--a suit challenging the election has been filed by airport proponents--and that annexation by Irvine isn’t assured, Coad said.

Irvine officials have said they hope to circulate an environmental review required for annexation by Sept. 1, with approval in January by the Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees annexations and incorporations. City officials were still in meetings Thursday and couldn’t be reached.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said he left his meeting convinced the Navy will work with Irvine.

“If they have to go the extra mile to make the deal work with Irvine, they have to make that happen,” he said.

Spitzer said he was heartened that the officials couldn’t answer all the supervisors’ questions. That showed, he said, that they did not have their own agenda and would work with Irvine on the answers.

Supervisor Chuck Smith, a longtime supporter of a commercial airport at the base, said his message to Johnson and Creed was that annexation will be a complicated undertaking. Irvine’s previous applications to take over the base were withdrawn because the city’s documents were incomplete. Among the studies is a financial review showing how the city will pay for servicing the new area.

“It’s going to be a huge process,” Smith said. “Their being ready to annex by the end of the year is a myth. The system doesn’t work that way. I don’t think the Navy recognized that.”

Protecting county taxpayers from paying any more for the upkeep of the 4,700-acre base was the main concern of Supervisor Jim Silva. The cost was to be about $7million this year. Navy officials have said they will end the county’s responsibility for the base June 30.

“I have concern about the additional cost to the county,” said Silva, who sits on LAFCO as a county alternate and will vote on Irvine’s annexation request.

Coad and her advisor/husband, Tom Coad, said they became familiar with sales of federal property in the 1960s when they bought land at Camp Elliott in San Diego. The sales brochure promised the area would be developed into neighborhoods with parks and schools. Nearly 40 years later, nothing has been built and the property remains in litigation, they said.

“Only three years ago, they were still sweeping for spent ordnance,” Cynthia Coad said.