Airport Backer Urges Smaller El Toro Plan

The chief booster of a new airport at the mothballed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station says Orange County’s Board of Supervisors must immediately cut the project in half if they ever hope to get the long-planned project off the ground.

Businessman George Argyros, who has pushed the hardest, spent the most and dug the deepest for the new airfield, said the county’s current plan for an airport--widely opposed by its future neighbors--is so large it wouldn’t be needed for another 100 years.

Public support for the airport has eroded in Orange County, he said, because voters aren’t convinced such an airport is really needed.

“People don’t want people to take an unnecessary burden,” said Argyros, who has invested about $3.5 million of his own money to promote the airport, but has spoken little publicly about the county’s handling of it.

So far, supervisors have stuck to their guns to complete a plan to build a new airport at the 4,700-acre base to handle 28.8 million people a year by 2020. A year ago, Supervisor Cynthia Coad--with Argyros’ urging--proposed to cap the airport’s size at 18.8 million passengers a year, but the idea was rejected by then-County Executive Officer Janice Mittermeier.

Airport opponents in southern Orange County, meanwhile, accused Argyros of using bait-and-switch tactics--pushing for a smaller airport that would start growing as soon as the first planes touched down. Many El Toro foes have made Argyros a one-man target in the airport fight because he nearly single-handedly funded the campaigns of three pro-airport ballot measures, dating to 1994.

Board Chairman Chuck Smith insisted last week that changing the county’s plan now would jeopardize an ongoing review by the Federal Aviation Administration and could stop the Navy’s process of handing the property over to the county. Smith said he told Argyros as much in a recent meeting.

“The FAA already has told us that if we start messing with the numbers now, they’ll trash what they’ve done,” Smith said. “I’m not about to stall the process for a couple of years.”

That said, Smith acknowledged that there is no support among his two pro-airport colleagues on the five-member board to build an airport that handles nearly 29 million passengers a year.

Once the base is under control of the county, Smith said, he probably will recommend that supervisors approve building only the first phase of the new airport--to serve 8.8 million passengers a year, about the size of John Wayne Airport.

“From that standpoint, I agree with George that it should be downsized,” Smith said. “I think that’s automatic. Then it’ll be up to the board 15 years from now to deal with the airport to meet whatever demand is there.”

Supervisor Jim Silva said he would support reducing the size of the airport to between 10 million and 14 million passengers, with John Wayne Airport staying about the same size. The county’s airport serves about 7.5 million passengers a year.

Argyros’ prodding comes as the county awaits a decision by a Los Angeles County judge on the fate of an anti-airport ballot measure passed by voters in March. If upheld, Measure F would require a future vote on the airport, with two-thirds approval required before it could be built.

An opinion poll released last month by Cal State Fullerton showed continued strong opposition to the new airport, with only about a third of county voters supporting it. For the first time, a majority of voters in the north part of the county were opposed to the county’s plan, the poll revealed.

That the airport will be headed back to the ballot appears certain. It would be automatic if the judge upholds Measure F, and highly likely even if he doesn’t because of opposition in the south part of the county. In either case, a smaller version would be a far better sell to the rest of the county, Argyros said.

“If you have a sensible plan for the airport that’s sized realistically, I think the general public in Orange County would vote for it,” he said.

That strategy is transparent, said Len Kranser, who operates a Web site and message board for anti-airport groups. “It’s a big push for the ‘Let the camel get its nose into the tent and the rest will follow,’ ” he said.

Airport adversaries say the county’s intentions are even more nefarious, noting that the only environmental review so far approved by supervisors calls for the airport to handle 38 million passengers a year, with John Wayne Airport closed to commercial aircraft. That plan, though, is being revamped, with the smaller proposal going before supervisors for a final vote next year.

Argyros conceded that the anti-airport temperament in the south part of the county won’t change no matter how much the airport plan shrinks. But the rest of Orange County has been “hoodwinked,” he said, by a multimillion-dollar campaign of misinformation that has ignored the county’s airport needs and the ability of John Wayne Airport’s single runway on 500 acres to fill them.

“I don’t think the county--and I hope that changes--has the ability to properly articulate the case and the need for an airport and to position it properly with the public,” he said. “We’ve got to have our elected officials have the courage to do the right thing and get on with it.”

Part of the county’s quandary, Smith said, is that it has been required by state and federal environmental laws to study the maximum impacts of a new airport at El Toro and whether they could be mitigated. The county’s first pass at an El Toro airport suggested the maximum capacity would be 38 million passengers a year, so that’s what was studied, he said.

Since then, the airport has been reduced in size once--in December 1996--and probably will be again, he said.

Moreover, in March, the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which oversees regional transportation issues, will release new airport demand figures for Southern California over the next 20 years, numbers that should be analyzed before a final size of the airport is determined, Smith said.

“We’ll construct an airport to meet the demand,” he said. “Certainly, it’ll be more palatable if it’s downsized, and it will be downsized. But we don’t have enough data to make that decision yet.”