Orange County Register, Metro Section Feb. 24, 1997
From the Register web site at http://www.ocregister.com

EDITORIAL
Pie in the sky

There was never a formal, worldwide request put out for proposals for possible private sector uses of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

In other words, there was no systematic, aggressive effort to consult the market for a signal as to the best and highest use of the land. That failure on the part of county officials no doubt adds to the frustration among airport opponents, mostly South County residents, who are trying to reverse a planning process that seems to have an airport as its inevitable goal.

Yet frustration is no excuse for seizing on fly-by-night alternatives that can only unnecessarily divert the energies of everyone involved.

It will require a lot of evidence to show that a proposal for an entertainment and sports complex centered around a professional football stadium does not fall into that category, a scheme that might be superficially intriguing but is fundamentally implausible.

To begin with -- and, indeed, to end with -- take cost. Irvine Councliman Dave Christensen, who has taken part in talks about the plan, said his city might have to toss as much as $70 million into the project before the NFL would show any interest.

And even that expensive scenario rests on a lot of questionable foundations. It assumes that powerful opposition from Anaheim, where officials have expressed continuing desire to bring back pro football, either won't materialize or can't be sustained. And, indeed, that Los Angeles' own quest for a team won't wield even more muscle than Anaheim's.

And it assumes that the federal authorities who oversee the base closure process will give an audience to a local jurisdiction (in this case, Irvine) other than the county. So far, there is nothing to nurture that belief. Quite the contrary: The Defense Department has designated the Board of Supervisors to make all local decisions about new projects for the base.

We continue to favor a bidding arrangement that would test any proposal for El Toro by its market viability. It is possible an airport of some dimensions would be the market's answer -- ideally, a facility privately built and operated.

But under the base re-use ground rules as now laid out, it must be the county that initiates any such bid process. That it hasn't done so thus far doesn't foreclose the possibility that the supervisors can see the light -- or feel the heat -- and change strategy.

Bottom line: alternative-use proposals that are longer on costs than credibility do not seem likely to hasten that goal.