Base Offer Muddies El Toro Debate
The following article from the Orange County Business Journal is reproduced with the approval of the OCBJ. The articles are published electronically here as a public service. The OCBJ supports the conversion of El Toro to a commercial airport. Statements made by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the El Toro Airport Info Site Team.
Orange County Business Journal May 3, 1999
Base Offer Muddies El Toro Debate
By PETER BRENNAN
The federal government says it is ready to give the El Toro and Tustin Marine bases away for free.
The move could give new hope to El Toro airport foes that they can pull off their non-aviation Millennium Plan, even as it means the county could take control of El Toro and proceed with its airport plan sooner. Meanwhile, the city of Tustin could save millions of dollars.
There has been much talk about whether the Marine air bases at El Toro and Tustin are worth millions, if not billions of dollars, and how much the federal government could make by selling them. But the base-closure process here and nationally has bogged down in recent months as appraisals and price negotiations have dragged out. All the while, the Defense Department has continued to pay for the maintenance and administration of the bases slated for closure. So, on April 21, President Clinton ordered the Defense Department to seek congressional authorization to convey the bases to local authorities for free.
The Orange County government would not be greatly affected by this new federal policy, since it was slated to get most of the El Toro base for free anyway. But county officials are hoping it could help speed the transfer of the base into county hands, which has been bogged down for a variety of reasons.
“The best thing about it is that President Clinton is trying to light a fire under the whole base-closure process and get these bases transferred to civilian use as quick as possible,” said Ellen Call, the county’s spokeswoman on El Toro. “The sooner this property is in the hands of the county, the better.”
The anti-airport Millennium Plan also gets a boost from this change. Pro-airport critics of the plan have argued that the federal government would give El Toro for free if it is to be used as an airport, but otherwise the county would have to pay for it and then recoup the funds by selling it to the private sector.
When ETRPA originally presented the Millennium Plan last year, it had estimated it could buy the base for $291 million from the government. It had also estimated that after the infrastructure was built, the land could be sold $1 billion to commercial and residential developers. Interra, a consulting firm hired by airport proponents, estimated that the Millennium Plan backers would have had to pay $470 million to the federal government. Now, the Millennium Plan won’t be weighed down by the cost of buying the land, just the cost of redeveloping it.
“It’s a benefit for the Millennium Plan,” said Susan Withrow, chairwoman of the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA), which is composed of seven south OC cities. Still, the Millennium Plan is a long shot because it would need approval from the five-member OC Board of Supervisors, three of whom favor the airport.
The Department of Defense is organizing a Base Reuse “Red Team” of senior military and civilian officials to move more quickly on closing the bases.
The city of Tustin has already been contacted by the Department of Defense about the new policy. “I think it’s just great,” said Christine Shingleton, Tustin’s assistant city manager and its redevelopment director for base closure. “It will give us the ability to bring the property sooner to market and reduce the financial burden on developers.”
Shingleton declined to say how much the city of Tustin was willing to pay the federal government for the 1,280 acres it wanted on the 1,602-acre base. She said the base wouldn’t have been sold for market value anyway, because the government would have discounted the amount needed to redevelop the land. Tustin has estimated that it will need $180 million to renovate the base for commercial use, everything from installing new roads and sewers to demolishing existing buildings.
Tustin has been planning since 1992 to take over the base. Shingleton said the base-closure process has taken too long, mostly as a result of the appraisal process. “The military is spending millions of dollars to maintain these facilities and on the administrative support to negotiate the conveyances,” Shingleton said.
But some may not be pleased. Reps. Chris Cox, R-Newport Beach, and Ron
Packard, R-Oceanside, previously have said the bases should be sold to
the highest bidders. Some members of Congress have pressured the military
to earn some money on what have been called billion-dollar assets.