Hb (Hb)
Username: Hb
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 12:57 pm: | |
TAKE THAT, AIRPORT WORKING GROUP
Daily Pilot, May 11, 2006
El Toro airport proponents, get ready to lie down in front of the bulldozers. Work begins Friday to break up the runways on a portion of the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.
The base was closed in 1999 and sold by the military in 2005 for nearly $650 million, dashing the hopes of Newport-Mesa residents who thought a commercial airport there could take pressure off John Wayne Airport.
Part of the 3,900-acre property will become the Great Park, which will include some public open space, and the bulk of it will become the private Heritage Fields development. Officials with Lennar Homes, the company that's building Heritage Fields, said Wednesday it will take about three years to do the work, which includes removing three tons of material, mainly from four runways that total 36,000 feet in length.
(Website Editor: Yes, they wrote "three tons of material". Hopefully this will be the final bit of misinformation about El Toro to come out of Newport Beach.)
The runway pavement will all be reused on-site, either as fill material or ground up and used to make new concrete, said Bruce Harrigan, Lennar's vice president of operations.
Removing the runways is a symbolic beginning to the base's transition to a civilian, airplane-free site. Heritage Fields will include 3,600 homes and commercial and retail space. The first homes will be available in 2008, Harrigan said.
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