Balloons to Inflate Cost

One of the toughest parts of writing this column every week, while also holding down a real job and raising a family, is finding something interesting to write. Then sometimes a story just falls right in your lap.

In June I wrote about the Great Housing Project — excuse me, The Great Park in Irvine. The former El Toro airport will soon be a 9,500 home project.

Not exactly what the voters of Orange County were told when they voted down the airport use and voted for the Great Park. Part of the project will be a $1.2-billion park. I said billion.

It was kicked off in July with a $4.6-million balloon attraction. The tethered balloon is designed to give rides up to 500 feet over the future development. It was built and subsidized by the Great Park Corporation, which owns the land and collects the development fees from the home builders supposedly to pay for its construction and operation.

In July it was explained to the public that the balloon rides, which would cost $20 for adults and $15 for children, would be given free to the public for about six months.

The cost to operate the ride was $1.6 million per year. With some corporate sponsorship revenue — and there hasn’t been any so far — the balloon ride would take approximately 60,000 visitors a year to break even.

The project is on target to get the 60,000 balloon enthusiasts. The problem is that it drew that many because the rides are offered for free.

As I have said previously, nobody in his or her right mind would expect a family of four to take a 10-minute ride up 500 feet and pay $60.

Well, guess what? None of the Great Park directors, except for Christina Shea and Steven Choi, ever expected to get any revenue for the balloon rides. In fact, this week, Chairman Larry Agran made it very clear that he never expected and or wanted any revenues from the balloon from “individuals and families.” He thought it would ruin the whole experience of the park if people actually paid for the ride.

I’m wondering when the balloon ride was first brought to the board, with the $20 charge, why Chairman Agran never mentioned that he would never, ever support any charge for the ride. Maybe he knew that if he said that, the $4.6 million expenditure would never be approved.

What I just described to you was just background for what happened last Thursday at a special meeting of the Great Park Corporation.

On a 7-1 vote they agreed to never charge any fee for the balloon. To add insult to injury, they added additional days of operation and night flights for free. This raised the cost of the whole operation from $1.6 million to $4.2 million per year. And it’s all subsidized by the Irvine taxpayers, despite the fact that only about 30% of the riders are from Irvine.

That is not all. As part of the same vote, they approved an additional expenditure of $11.5 million for a 5-acre lawn, a larger parking lot, visitor tent and lighting for night flights.

Add it up, and they have spent $16.1 million to build and expect to spend another $17.5 million over the next five years to operate a balloon ride. That’s correct — $33.6 million for the ride.

While other parts of Orange County, including Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, are trying to figure out how to pay for basic needs like road repair, soccer fields and better school facilities, Irvine is blowing $33.6 million on free balloon rides.

To paraphrase a famous quote, “Just look how expensive it gets when it’s free.”