Runway breakup helps make way for 688 acres of Great Park

More than a decade after voters rejected efforts to build an international airport at the former El Toro Marine base in favor of a grand municipal park, Irvine officials said Tuesday that they are delivering on that promise. As evidence, troughs filled with small chunks of pulverized concrete invited guests at a groundbreaking celebration to take home a piece of the base’s runways, a reminder that jets will never again land there.

FivePoint Communities presented the party to mark the start of construction on the 688 acres of the Orange County Great Park that the developer agreed to develop in exchange for the right to build thousands more homes around the park.

The ceremony was piled high with symbolic gestures. Miniature soccer fields waited for pint-size athletes who may someday show their skills at a planned sports park twice the size of Disneyland.

A bulldozer stood ready in front of a big stage fit for a rock concert. On top of the machine, an orange bicycle was perched, representing the neighborhoods that will ring the park.

“I’m proud to give this big moment to you today,” Mayor Steven Choi said. “It’s been rocky, there have been ups and downs, but we are here finally.”

The FivePoint portion of the park will include a bosque wooded area with hiking and biking trails, a golf course and the 176-acre sports complex. The company expects to spend about $260 million on construction, which is expected to be complete in about four years, said President and Chief Executive Emile Haddad.

The groundbreaking festivities — which featured free treats from local food trucks, photo stations and a performance by Kenny Loggins — came even as long-running controversies continue to dog the site’s transformation process.

City-hired auditors and the Orange County district attorney’s office are investigating how the city spent more than $200 million in a years-long effort to develop the park, with little broken ground to show for it.

When the city struck the deal with FivePoint last year to complete a scaled-back version of what had been pitched as an epic space to rival Central Park in New York City and Balboa Park in San Diego, the move was controversial.

Irvine City Council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, longtime Great Park champions, fought hard against the deal before they were outvoted.

The two didn’t join colleagues Choi, Mayor Pro Tem Jeff Lalloway and Councilwoman Christina Shea onstage at Tuesday’s event.

FivePoint recently was on the losing end of a debate over whether to put a state veterans cemetery in the park. The company had objected, saying the cemetery’s proximity to homes could make the neighborhoods undesirable to buyers from Asia, for whom living near the dead could be considered bad feng shui.

Earlier Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown appeared at the Great Park to champion the veterans cemetery plan, standing alongside Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Fullerton), who introduced legislation clearing the way for the cemetery.

Tuesday evening, though, none of that took away from the FivePoint event, which drew about 3,500 people.

“You deserve to witness history being made,” Haddad said. He asked veterans in the crowd to stand.

“It is through your sacrifices that we have the ability to say that military runways are not needed and we can turn our runways into greenways,” he told them.

Guests for the most part said they were pleased to see things moving at the park.

“When we first moved here, they just had the balloon, but we’ve been to a couple events,” said Heather McKinsey, a seven-year Irvine resident who took her three children to the event.

She added that she hasn’t paid much attention to the politics: “I figure they know what they’re doing.”

Her daughter Courtney, 5, took a quick break from playing with friends to take a bite out of a gourmet hot dog. She said she was excited for ice cream.

Karen Chromley, an Irvine resident for 25 years, said that although her children are grown, she expected to return to the park for the biking trails.

A professional baseball team might someday make a nice draw too, her friend Leslie O’Connor suggested with a chuckle.

But Eldon Gramley, an Orange resident who worked for the city of Irvine from 1976 to 1990, said he was sad to see the runways ripped out.

“We enjoyed the Marine base when it was here,” he said. “But times have changed.”

In any case, the crowd applauded when the bulldozer roared to life.

Later, Loggins stood onstage in front of a giant screen showing renderings of the park.

He started to sing:

“Where are the dreams that we once had?

This is the time to bring them back.”