Building the Great Park is no easy task

By SEAN EMERY | THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

IRVINE – With the kickoff to the first major round of Great Park construction only a few months away, park leaders are learning that it isn’t easy beginning to transform a stark military base into a world-class metropolitan park.

Park officials over the past five months have focused on largely behind-the-scene efforts to turn award-winning Great Park design plans into the construction-ready documents needed before various park amenities can go out to bid.

“The schematic design it is about what you want to do,” deputy Great Park CEO Cliff Wallace said. “Now it is about how you want to do it.”

City leaders set the stage for the work in November, allocating $65 million toward the first major wave of park construction, known as the Western Sector Development plan, which essentially will flesh out the Great Park’s existing preview park and festival site with new sports fields, agricultural space, community gardens and improved roadways.

But carrying out the construction plan means juggling nearly two-dozen separate projects, officials say, many with differing review processes and timelines. Construction of the first of the projects – an open-turf area and parking lot known as the North Lawn and an adjacent picnic area – are to begin this summer.

“This is a massive project area, 50 or 60 acres not counting some of the agriculture,” Great Park CEO Mike Ellzey said of the Western Sector plan. “And all of it is happening at once, with each part having its own personality.”

Early planning for the Western Sector actually began a year before the council approval, when Ellzey and Wallace visited officials at the Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure office in San Diego.

While city leaders took responsibility for oversight of Great Park land in 2005, actual ownership of many portions of the now-shuttered El Toro air base is still in the Navy’s hands, thanks to a decades-long cleanup effort at what once was considered one of the country’s most contaminated military installations.

The Great Park agreement calls for the deeds to be turned over to the city once the cleanup measures are completed. But, in the meantime, the city essentially holds a lease on many portions of park land.

“They are our landlords, and when you develop on someone else’s property you need their approval,” Wallace said of the Navy. “It makes it more complicated, it adds time. But fortunately we have developed this (plan) knowing what their concerns are.”

Few know the background of the Great Park land as well as Wallace, a retired Marine who helped oversee El Toro’s closure, managed the base as a consultant for the county from 1999 to 2004, then returned in 2007 to work for the city-run Great Park Corporation. Park leaders say his experience has proven invaluable in bridging the gaps left by an incomplete El Toro record system, as well as the complicated Navy review process.

For the Western Sector Development plan, park officials have to be particularly mindful of adjacent Navy extraction wells used to remove contaminants from an underground aquifer. While several projects, including the North Lawn and picnic area, already have Navy approval, others, most notably planned sports fields, must still go through a lengthy review process that also includes federal and state environmental boards.

“To be frank and honest, we are concentrating on what we can get going right now,” Wallace said.

Construction planning was further complicated by a lawsuit filed last year against the city of Irvine by Forest Lawn Mortuary, which argued that changes to a development agreement with Lennar Corp., owner of the private land surrounding the Great Park, would block them from building a promised cemetery and require further environmental review.

The lawsuit allowed Lennar to delay more than $40 million in infrastructure and construction work. Rather than wait for the litigation to play out, Great Park leaders decided to tap into existing base infrastructure – including storm drains, sewers, potable water, roadways and electrical utilities – in order to pave the way for the Western Sector Development Plan.

“We are going back in there and evaluating all the existing infrastructure to see what is usable,” Ellzey said. “We just went to ‘Plan B,’ because we have waited long enough.”

Great Park leaders also decided to work around the existing El Toro runways, arguing that at the moment it would be cost-prohibitive to remove them, particularly since they often are rented out as a source of park revenue.

“It is millions and millions of dollars to remove those runways, and with a $65 million limited program we decided to design around them,” Ellzey said. “Someday when we get all our cylinders working with our development partner, they will be responsible for taking out those runways.”

Park leaders have a financial incentive to get development rolling because recent studies show that the cost of nonresidential construction dropped by 30 percent during the past year.

Park officials say they are fast-tracking the city permit process by submitting both project and construction plans at once rather than one after another, a move that is expected to trim months off the construction timeline.

“It is in our best interest to get these on the street as soon as possible, because the bidding climate is pretty good,” Wallace said. ‘We are really churning to get these out there so we can get some savings.”

By this summer, Great Park officials say they will begin work on the North Lawn and the picnic area, with the goal of opening them to the public next spring. They also hope to begin work in planned community gardens.

By fall, officials expect to add construction in a planned squadron complex and food court, and to begin rehabilitation work in a former El Toro hangar turned events center.

By the summer of 2011, park leaders hope to have the Navy’s approval to begin work on the sports fields.

https://www.ocregister.com/news/park-244636-great-construction.html