City Challenges Irvine Co. on El Toro

With time running out on their efforts to kill the proposed airport at El Toro, Irvine city officials are challenging the Irvine Co. to declare its opposition to the international airfield.

Angry public comments made recently by council members mark the first time in the city’s 28-year history that it has so openly split with the real estate development company that created it.

Frustrated with the company’s silence on El Toro, the most contentious issue in Orange County, council members have begun publicly uttering what before was unspeakable--even privately.

“We can’t regulate how they market their product, but we can regulate whether their product gets approved,” Irvine Councilman Dave Christensen said this week.

Councilman Mike Ward wrote a stinging letter last week to Gary Hunt, the Irvine Co.’s executive vice president.

“The time for wordsmithing, posturing, and/or excuses is over,” Ward stated. “We are approaching the point where, if you are not with us, you are against us.”

What city officials want from the company is the very thing they’re prepared to use against it: political clout.

“The company comes to us and needs our help to meet with companies that want to move here, to tell them what a great place Irvine is,” Ward said in an interview. “If they want us to help them, they need to help us. We need them to help us in Washington, in Sacramento and before the county.”

Decision-makers would be “strongly reconsidering” whether to build an airport at El Toro if Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren didn’t want one there, Christensen said.

“It may not be important for the company that it has a position, but it’s important for us that the company has a position,” he said.

Company Says It Needs More Time to Decide

Company officials insist that because detailed information isn’t yet available, they cannot and will not take a position either on El Toro or on a non-aviation plan proposed by seven South County cities, including Irvine.

“When we are convinced we have enough information about the final project and what the specific impacts would be, we’ll be in a much stronger position to express an opinion,” said Irvine Co. spokesman Larry Thomas, a senior vice president.

What the city would do to Orange County’s largest landholder hasn’t been decided.

The city, for instance, has power to approve building plans and permits. About a third of the 50,000 acres the Irvine Co. has yet to develop are in the city or adjacent areas the city likely will annex, the company estimates. But even a strident Christensen isn’t proposing to shut down construction.

City Council members recently directed their lawyer to outline the city’s options for disclosing to new home buyers the “potential dangers” if the airport is built.

The city could, among other things, send cautionary letters to prospective businesses and residents and erect billboards with warnings near the company’s new home projects.

The city could decide that the airport is at odds with its general plan, spurring adoption of urgency ordinances or temporary moratoriums to “prevent harmful conflicts” until the general plan is changed, City Atty. Joel Kuperberg said.

Even the tamest measures could scare away 20% to 30% of potential buyers, said Patrick Knapp, a sales agent for Remax Real Estate in Irvine and Newport Beach.

He said he recently lost a sale in the Northwood subdivision because a prospective buyer from Los Angeles County was warned by a friend about the airport.

“In the long run, there would probably be other buyers, but it could cause problems for the company in the short term,” Knapp said.

If issuing alerts about the airport results in fewer home sales, which also would affect city coffers, “that could be part of the price” the city must pay to kill the airport, Councilman Larry Agran said.

To pro-airport folks such as Bruce Nestande, chairman of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, the city has no business using its power for threats and intimidation. By attempting to force the Irvine Co. to get involved, the city is admitting that it has failed to influence the process on its own, he said.

“To reach that level of desperation indicates their power of persuasion has lost its effectiveness regarding the entire El Toro process,” Nestande said.

The city’s insistence that the company declare itself on El Toro could backfire, said Stan Oftelie, executive director of the pro-airport Orange County Business Council.

“People react negatively when they see government trying to muscle individuals or businesses,” Oftelie said. “It’s unseemly.”

But the rhetoric appears to be having some impact. Ward, Agran and Mayor Christina L. Shea said Hunt called them in recent days asking for a meeting.

The company’s refusal to be pinned down doesn’t mean it hasn’t been involved in analyzing the airport, Thomas said. The company has challenged aspects of airport planning, questioning whether the county adequately identified the impact of traffic and noise, according to correspondence from senior vice president Monica Florian.

The airport and a regional park would replace the 4,700-acre Marine base, which the military will close July 2 and eventually turn over to the county. Supervisors are scheduled to approve the final airport project in December.

The Irvine Co. has a historic attachment to both the El Toro base and the former Marine helicopter base in Tustin. It was the Irvine family that sold the land for both bases to the federal government in 1942 for $100,000.

In 1960, the company developed a master plan of what eventually would become the city of Irvine, which incorporated in 1970. The company owns all the developable vacant land in Irvine.

The company currently is handling 15 residential projects in Irvine, as well as eight in Orange and Tustin and 12 on Newport Coast, an area that Newport Beach likely will annex.

No one disputes that the company stands to make millions of dollars on whatever is developed around the base. But the company must maintain a delicate balance between the political interests of Irvine, which is opposed to El Toro, and Newport Beach, which supports a new airport with equal fervor.

Newport Beach Mayor Dennis D. O’Neil said his city shares Irvine’s frustration over the company’s refusal to join the debate.

“It would be extremely beneficial to either side if the company took a position [of support],” O’Neil said.

Shea, Irvine’s mayor, sent a letter to Bren earlier this month asking the company to “clarify” its position. In the early 1970s, the company opposed commercial flights at El Toro “for reasons of safety and environmental compatibility,” according to a recent city report.

But Shea is hesitant to support an aggressive city-sanctioned disclosure campaign on El Toro. Doing so “would be saying that we’ve lost the battle,” she said, “and I’m not ready to say that.”

The Irvine Co. does provide information about the proposed commercial airport, but it is divulged during escrow--after a buyer has agreed to purchase the home.

Anyone going to the Irvine Homefinding Center this month would receive numerous maps and brochures about the housing projects with no mention of El Toro. A company spokesman said a question-and-answer handout should have been provided.

Ward, who has supported the company in the past, said the city has lost patience with the company’s wait-and-see attitude.

If the city stops El Toro, “you will have shown us beyond all doubt that we do not need your help,” Ward wrote to Hunt. And if El Toro is built, “we will always know that the Irvine Co. could have made a difference--and refused.”

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Irvine vs. the Irvine Co.

Plans for converting the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro into a commercial airport are threatening to split the Irvine Co. and the city it created. The company has about 50,000 acres left to develop in Orange County, and 35% of that is adjacent to or within the City of Irvine, which must approve developments.