Cypress mayor backs alternative plan for El Toro

Paul Clinton

NEWPORT BEACH -- Cypress Mayor Mike McGill has put his name on a

growing list of supporters of an alternative runway alignment for an

airport at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Since mid-June, a pilots group and a North County airport coalition

said they supported federal review of what has become known as the

“V-plan.” It was crafted by retired engineer and Newport Beach resident

Charles Griffin.

McGill, however, took it a step further.

“It makes sense,” McGill said Tuesday about the plan. “It seems like a

non-intrusive plan. It won’t create an airport that, for lack of a better

word, is overbuilt.”

Griffin and a group of supporters formed The New Millennium Group, a

political action committee, to launch the V-plan as a ballot initiative

in March.

The plan, which was analyzed in Orange County’s environmental review

of a 28.8-million annual passenger airport at El Toro, is formally known

as the Wildland Ranch Alternative.

Millennium Group leaders imposed a Thursday deadline to raise $10,000

so they can hire an attorney to make the initiative “bulletproof,” said

group member and Villa Park Councilman Bob McGowan. So far, they’ve

raised $7,000.

“We just want the right airport,” McGowan said of the alternative.

The V-plan would realign El Toro’s east-west runway so it would form

an inverted V-pattern with the north-south runway.

In mid-June, Air Line Pilots Assn. Capt. Jon Russell sent an e-mail to

Griffin saying he would lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to

review his idea.

The FAA has refused to formally review the alternative because it

isn’t the preferred plan of the county’s Local Redevelopment Authority,

the agency planning the facility.

The Orange County Regional Airport Authority has also urged the FAA to

review the V-plan.

Newport Beach officials pushing for an airport at the base said the

county shouldn’t consider Griffin’s plan because it would delay the

airport long enough for South County leaders to change the zoning with

their Great Park initiative.

That initiative, also set for a March vote, would dump the base’s

aviation zoning, approved by voters in 1994, in favor of open space.

Despite McGill’s endorsement, Newport Beach Councilman Gary Proctor

said he was unconvinced Griffin’s plan would ever succeed.

“I don’t think the plan is building momentum,” Proctor said. “I think

people want more information.”