Ready to Rumble

Paul Clinton

IRVINE -- Come March, Mayor Larry Agran will step into the ring of

public opinion with confidence.

Agran’s park plan for the closed El Toro Marine Air Station is headed

for a countywide vote, and Irvine’s most recognizable politician couldn’t

be happier.

“The idea of an Orange County Central Park is such a compelling and

sound idea that the arguments [against it] are almost laughable,” Agran

said. “We’ve won the hearts and minds of the majority of people in the

county.”

The El Toro Reuse Planning Authority proposed the initiative April 30.

Instead of an airport, Agran and other South County leaders want a

central park at the 4,700-acre base, which would be rezoned from aviation

to parkland if it passes. The plan also requires Irvine to annex the base

property.

Agran, a lightning rod for claims of South County NIMBYism,

synthesized his central park idea in a series of 1997 workshops with his

nonprofit group, Project 99.

Before those workshops, Agran and his South County allies struggled to

gain traction with voters across the county that an airport shouldn’t be

built at the closed marine base.

“It became clear that you couldn’t beat a bad plan with no plan,”

Agran said. “You had to have a good idea.”

A battery of Irvine polling in recent years has revealedwide support

for a park at the base, Agran said.

But not everyone is gushing. Bruce Nestande, head of the pro-airport

group Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, said the plan is unworkable

because its elements -- a park, library, university satellite and museum

-- have been cynically patched together.

“The Great Park is a great sham,” Nestande said. “It is the result of

hundreds of thousands of dollars of mail-driven polling. . . . If it

polls well, it goes in the Great Park.”

In many ways, the Great Park is Agran’s salvation. Defeated in 1990

after 12 years on the Irvine City Council, Agran had, in some ways, lost

his way.

Agran’s defeat was engineered, to some degree, by the Lincoln Club, a

well-financed Republican organization that spent $25,000 against him.

Then, after a small-time run for the White House in 1992 -- he

captured less than 1% of the vote -- Agran retreated to his

public-interest law practice.

Agran has openly embraced liberal causes, advocating

antidiscrimination ordinances for gays and lesbians and opposing

anti-growth measures in his own city.

His reemergence, on the strength of the park plan hatched in the

workshops, led to his election back on the council in 1998.

Agran, 56, is now riding high.

“When we send out a survey to over 120,000 households, people say a

Great Park is a great idea,” Agran said.