Great Park Board to Meet for First Time

The Orange County Great Park Corp., a nonprofit organization charged with redeveloping the closed El Toro Marine base, will hold its first board meeting today, opening a new chapter in a decade-long saga that has divided the region.

The event will be largely ceremonial, filled with presentations and the formal seating of the nine-member board of directors. But it will further cement the fate of the former military airfield, whose possible reuse as a commercial airport led to several ballot measures and lawsuits.

The debate began waning last year when Orange County voters passed Measure W, calling for the base to be turned into a large park with modest housing and commercial development.

“This is no longer a political story,” Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said. “This is now a development story.”

Irvine, which won the right to annex El Toro last month, plans to turn the 4,700-acre base into a complex of parks, homes and businesses called Great Park. The city formed a corporation to manage the development and maintain its public facilities.

City officials said the move was needed to protect Irvine if the project runs into problems.

The Navy, which still owns the property, plans to auction about 3,700 acres to private developers next year. An additional 1,000 acres have been set aside for a wildlife habitat.

Under Irvine’s plan, developers will deed about 1,336 acres to the city for public uses such as parks, schools and museums. In return, they will receive rights to use the remaining land to build two golf courses, an exposition center, retail centers, office space and 3,600 homes.

The centerpiece of the development will be the 600-acre Meadows Park, which Irvine officials envision as Orange County’s version of New York’s Central Park.

“All the great metropolitan areas have great parks,” Agran said. “This will be our great park.”

The public portions of the development, including Meadows Park, and infrastructure such as roads, sewer lines and water pipes, will be financed with $200 million in fees paid by developers and $153 million in bonds that will be paid back through assessments on property within the Great Park.

Developers may opt not to deed land for public use or pay the fees, but their rights to build will be severely limited, making such options unlikely, Irvine officials say.

The Great Park Corp. will oversee the collection of the fees and master develop the entire project. It will hire construction companies to build the public portions and collect maintenance fees estimated at $9.3 million annually when the project is complete.

Having an independent organization run the project “enforces a certain financial discipline,” Agran said. “If the dollars aren’t there, they aren’t going to be coming from the city.”

Agran said the city expects the Navy to complete the sale by the end of next year.

“We have basically a year to get us ready,” he said. “This has never been done before. It is a huge process.”

The setup of the corporation, however, came under fire this year when critics said the private entity was not accountable to the public.

The Irvine City Council responded by changing the board from seven appointees to nine members, including Irvine’s five council members and four appointees.

The City Council also added bylaws requiring the corporation to abide by state conflict-of-interest laws, open-meeting requirements and provisions of the state Public Records Act, which gives citizens access to financial and other records.

Joining council members on the board as initial appointees are Santa Ana Mayor Miguel A. Pulido, Newport Beach businessman and philanthropist James Ray, former Irvine Co. executive Richard Sim and Michael Pinto, founder of the Laguna Canyon Foundation, a preservation group.

“We represent quite a bit of diversity and backgrounds,” Pinto said. “But we are here to make sure that it becomes one vision and not a jumble of different interests.”

Finding a common vision will be the biggest challenge, Agran, Pinto and others said. But at least the airport issue is in the past.

“They have a plan, and it is an innovative plan .... Whether they can make it work on this scale remains to be seen,” said Stan Oftelie, president of the Orange County Business Council.

“We still think it should have been an airport, but we were trumped by local environmental and quality-of-life concerns. Let’s move on.

“Next page.”