Great Park / Grand Jury

It’s rather interesting now that both Frank Matarrese and Doug deHaan have both now — publicly — announced that they would be totally interested in a non-profit city led development corporation to move forward with Alameda Point.   Frank Matarrese also placed this as a Council Referral last night.   Frank Matarrese mentioned in the Island article that one could be formed in the vein of the Great Park in Orange County.   If you will remember  Frank Matarrese, Beverly Johnson, and the Interim City Manager paid a visit to Orange County to check out the Great Park lats November.   In a Sun article describing the visit to Great Park, Frank Matarrese said the reason why they paid a visit was:

“We are hoping to get a little background on what they have been doing,” said City Councilman Frank Matarrese, who is traveling south for the one-day visit. “They have been dealing with the Navy and that’s something we also must do.”

Which is a laughable excuse since the deal between the Navy and the City of Irvine about the El Toro base was extremely straightforward.   The Navy did an outright auction of the land in parcels.   Lennar won all the parcels and then the City of Irvine and the private developer worked out an agreement on their own.  $200 million to the Great Park folks and 1300 acres for their “Great Park” and Lennar can pretty much do whatever it wants with the rest of their land (in excess of 3000 acres).

What makes the “Great Park” model even more suspect is the recent (and past) Grand Jury scrutiny about (1) the structure (2005-2006 report) and (2) the financing (2009-2010 report)

Southern California comfort

Remember the Alameda Point  “contingency plan” that has been kicked around by both the Interim City Manager and Councilmember Frank Matarrese, well this small news item in the Alameda Journal is a possible hint toward the direction in which some folks in the City and on the Council may want to head.    The Alameda Journal reports that both Frank Matarrese, Mayor Beverly Johnson, and someone from the City Manager’s office would be meeting with representatives from the City of Irvine to talk about Irvine’s plans to redevelop El Toro which was a Marine Air Station.

So brief background on the El Toro base, initial plans were to convert that air station into an airport.   Made sense because it essentially was the same type of use.  But some folks didn’t want that and passed a measure that essentially forbid the construction of an airport.  Then a few years later another measure was passed that would earmark a substantial portion of the land as a municipal park of a scope that was supposed to rival Central Park in New York and Balboa Park in San Diego.