A park for all the county?

Paul Clinton

IRVINE -- Few in Newport Beach were surprised by South County’s

unveiling of an initiative Monday that, if passed, would pave the way for

a park at the closed El Toro Marine base.

But they weren’t blase about the public announcement, which came at a

joint meeting between the Irvine City Council and the El Toro Reuse

Planning Authority.

Officials at the authority, comprising nine South County cities

fighting the county’s airport plan, announced in December they would make

a bid to overturn 1994’s Measure A, in which county residents approved

aviation zoning at the base.

Newport Beach Councilman Dennis O’Neil said he was anxious about how

the park plan would be received by voters in the March election.

“What’s being proposed is a plan that, if propagandized correctly,

stands a pretty good chance,” O’Neil said. “It needs to be defeated

because it’s not in the best interests of the county.”

Deemed the Orange County Central Park and Nature Preserve Initiative,

the 30-page ballot measure launched Monday would invalidate Measure A, as

well as change the vacated base’s zoning to permit the grand park plan.

The Orange County Central Park, as it is now known, renames Irvine’s

“Great Park” plan. The initiative calls for the 4,700-acre base to be

turned into a park, nature preserve, library, museum, satellite

university campus or other non-aviation uses.

“What people want is they want to preserve open space,” said Allan

Songstad, the authority’s chairman. “That’s what this initiative is going

to do. It’s going to maintain our quality of life rather than deteriorate

our quality of life.”

Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, the grass-roots South County group

that mounted the Measure F campaign, is expected to circulate the

petitions required to put the measure on the ballot.

It will be South County’s third attempt, including Measure F, to

overturn Measure A. Another South County attempt, Measure S, failed in

1996.

The latest initiative doesn’t guarantee a park would ever be built,

said Barbara Lichman, an attorney with airport advocate Airport Working

Group. It only opens the door for county planners who have stubbornly

resisted reuse plans for the base that don’t include an airport.

Lichman, calling the measure “a chimera, an empty shell,” also

questioned the need for more green space in an already park-rich South

County.

“It’s in fact a great South County park,” Lichman said. “If it were

built, that’s who would get to use it. What is central about Lake Forest?

. . . This is nothing but a veiled land grab.”

The South County officials mounting their petition drive countered

that the park would appeal to all of the county’s residents.

“We need options for the people of Orange County,” Supervisor Todd

Spitzer said at the morning press conference. “They do not want an

airport in the center of Orange County. They want a park. . . . We don’t

need an airport to sustain our economy. We need a great park to offer

cultural amenities.”

Also on Monday, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, the primary architect of the

park alternative, unveiled a preliminary plan for funding his vision.

An endowment fund would be created from three revenue sources from the

existing base: reuse of housing, leasing of office and warehouse space,

and leases from agricultural land. Agran said those sources could

generate $25 million a year.

Spitzer promised the county would not raise taxes to pay for the park.

Officials in Newport Beach have criticized the plan as a financially

unfeasible pipe dream. Newport Beach Mayor Gary Adams and others said the

county would have trouble keeping Spitzer’s promise.

“In theory it’s an interesting concept, but we’ve got to have an

airport,” Adams said. “Literally, the cost of building and maintaining a

Great Park would be an unfair burden on the taxpayers of Orange County.”

QUESTION

THE GREAT PARK

Would the Orange County Central Park serve as a viable alternative to

an airport at the closed Marine base? Call our Readers Hotline at (949)

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