Great Park is a Misnomer

It has been six weeks since I started this column. My goal for each article is to look at issues that affect us all and try to drill down to what is really going on below the surface. People who have a vested interest in how a particular situation turns out will spin things in such a way as to hide or confuse the public to the point that it is hard to understand what is actually happening.

This reminds me of George Orwell's book "1984," which when I went to high school was mandatory reading but, taking a quick survey in my office, none of college-educated 20-somethings had even heard of it.

Orwell wrote it in 1948 and flipped the date for the book about the future. Orwell's Thought Police make not just doing something but thinking something illegal a "thoughtcrime."

Fast forward. We call those "hate crimes" today. That is where our criminal justice system adds additional penalties to crimes not for what you did, but what you thought about while doing what you did.

In "1984," Big Brother used language to control people. War means peace, freedom means slavery, and ignorance means strength. By changing the meaning of words, Big Brother renders the populace incapable of seeing what is really happening. It's not that much different today.

When talking about health care, the left wing says there is a "right to health care," that everyone should have it even if that means it has to be free to some and, therefore, cost more for everyone else.

When talking about the immigration bill stalled in the Senate, the left uses phrases like "path to citizenship," "family unification" and "orderly process," when in fact the real issues are overcrowded schools, overflowing emergency rooms and downward pressure on the wages of workers who are here legally.

But let's talk about an issue closer to home. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the chance we might lose the back nine of the Newport Beach Golf Course because of the expansion plans for John Wayne Airport. Elections have consequences, and we in this part of the county are about to feel them. The fight for an airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is over, the runways have been torn out, and the south part of the county has won its "Great Park." It has to bother you a little that the plan for a park at El Toro has now become the great housing project with traffic, people and pollution, that south county said they were trying to avoid by not having an airport.

But just like in "1984," changing the meaning of words is everything. Not many people would have voted for the "Great Housing Development," so just call it the Great Park.

The original plan pitched to county voters was 4,700 acres of "urban regional park and a variety of agricultural, material recovery/recycling, recreational, cultural, educational, employment, public and housing land uses." Once the measure passed and the county let Irvine annex the base, Irvine rezoned it to 3,700 homes, an industrial/office park, some retail and the now much smaller park.

Based on Irvine's new zoning, the federal government (read federal taxpayers) sold the property to the highest bidder in four parcels. Two parcels had only one bid. Subtract out the industrial and retail piece and the property sold for less than $90,000 per lot.

To put that in perspective, I bought lots in 1989 for $90,000 to build $300,000 homes. Needless to say, Lennar, the winning bidder, made a killing.

But something interesting happened on the way to developing what is now call Heritage Fields. The cost of building the Great Park went out of control. The park's cost, which started at less than $200 million, was now approaching $1.5 billion and rising.

The only way to pay for it was more park fees. That's when the city pulled another trick out of its hat. Officials rezoned the one parcel, which had only one bidder, to residential and allowed Lennar an astounding 5,800 additional homes for a total of 9,500 homes. To put it another way, $42,000 per lot.

Well, you might think who got taken on that deal. Do you think the bids might have been higher if builders knew they could build 9,500 homes instead of 3,700?

Instead of $640 million to the United States Treasury, it would be more like $1 billion.

Which brings me back to the use of language. If you go to the Heritage Fields website (www.heritagefields.com), you will find little if any reference to housing.

The nonpublic part of the property was broken into three districts: The Park District, The Lifelong Learning District and the Transit Oriented Development District, all three of which, if you didn't know it already, are 9,500 units of high-density housing.

Nowhere on the website does it talk about dense housing, just "neighborhoods designed for a creative class" of people who seek a stimulating environment."