Fullerton pitches its own base proposal

Alicia Robinson

A proposal from the city of Fullerton to operate a commercial airport

at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station has drawn interest and

skepticism from Newport-Mesa officials.

In a letter Tuesday to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman

Mineta, Fullerton city officials proposed that the U.S. Navy give the

former Marine air station to the transportation department, which

then would provide a lease to Fullerton to operate an airport.

“I think even the most loyal and ardent advocates for an airport

at El Toro would concede that this is a longshot,” Costa Mesa City

Manager Allan Roeder said.

The Navy plans to sell the El Toro property in an online auction

beginning Jan. 5, and Navy officials recently rejected a $255-million

bid from an Orange County military family support group to renovate

the base commissary and provide affordable housing for military

families on the property.

The Costa Mesa City Council has supported an El Toro airport in

the past and will likely continue to do so, but a new airport plan

would face a mountain of legal and administrative hurdles, Roeder

said.

The idea of a city operating an airport at El Toro is a new twist

on an old plan, Newport Beach City Councilman Steve Bromberg said.

Hoping to ease air-traffic woes at John Wayne Airport, Newport spent

upwards of $3 million pushing for a commercial airport at the base in

2000, but the county would have operated it under that plan, Bromberg

said.

Orange County voters rejected an El Toro airport in 2000, when

they approved a zoning change so the property could be used as

parkland, and Orange County supervisors in November voted to rescind

certification of two environmental reports that supported an airport

on the former military base.

“I’ll be watching this pretty closely,” Bromberg said. “It keeps

getting pronounced dead but not getting buried.”

Fullerton officials are reviving the airport plan because Orange

County is headed for a shortage of air-traffic capacity by 2013, as

shown by federal transportation department reports, Fullerton City

Councilman Leland Wilson said.

The city’s request will help bring attention back to the urgent

need for more air transportation in the county, he said.

“Something has got to be done, and the longer it goes without a

solution, the harder it’s going to be to do,” Wilson said.

The Newport Beach-based Airport Working Group, which has clung

tenaciously to an El Toro airport, was pleased with Fullerton’s

proposal.

“I think it’s great,” group spokesman Tom Naughton said. “I think

it makes a lot of sense.”

Another supporter of the plan is the Orange County Regional

Airport Authority, which on Tuesday night approved a resolution of

support for Fullerton’s airport plan. Wilson is chairman of the

airport authority. Its 10 cities include Costa Mesa and Newport

Beach.

Anti-airport observers think Fullerton is refusing to accept

what’s already been decided by various authorities.

“It’s a little bit late for that,” said Meg Waters, who worked

with the now-defunct El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a group formed

to oppose the airport. “Whether or not there’s going to be an airport

there was decided a long time ago.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.