Airport Foes Stymie Plans for El Toro Officers Club

Just weeks after touting the former El Toro Officers Club as the new hot spot for wedding receptions and other special occasions, Orange County officials have closed the facility and canceled the three dozen events booked there through year’s end.

The reason: The customary cocktails and champagne toasts wouldn’t be possible because Navy officials in Washington so far have refused to give permission for the sale or consumption of alcohol at base facilities controlled by the county, including the Officers Club and El Toro’s golf course clubhouse.

Besides canceling 36 dinners, dances and wedding receptions booked through December, county officials laid off 30 employees at the base.

“It’s really hurting what we wanted to be doing out there,” said Charles V. Smith, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors. “Who’s going to have a wedding reception without champagne?”

The county estimates that it has lost $13,000 a week since taking over several base buildings July 3, though losses have shrunk since the layoffs. Golfers have been irked to learn that they can’t grab a post-round beer, which also put a damper on bookings for corporate golf games, said Gary Simon, real estate manager for the county’s El Toro office.

Officials said they have no idea when the Navy might open the spigots. The issue is mired in Sacramento before a state commission mulling a usually routine procedure for transferring police powers from the federal government to the state. So far, the state Lands Commission, which meets next month, hasn’t scheduled a hearing on the issue.

The snag occurred after a coalition of South County cities opposed to a proposal for a commercial airport at El Toro challenged retrocession, the legal term for the police-powers transfer. The El Toro Reuse Planning Authority contended that it was the first step toward an eventual building of the airport and argued that all federal and state environmental studies should be completed first.

The coalition has no intention of dropping its challenge so the county can reopen the Officers Club, authority spokeswoman Meg Waters said.

“The county has been on a bender with this airport idea for long enough,” she said. “It’s time they sobered up.”

The retrocession issue bollixed another area of operations, Simon said: the disposal of hazardous waste.

Until police jurisdiction is transferred, the Navy will not allow the county to store fertilizer for the golf course, chlorine for the community swimming pool or toner cartridges for office equipment, or dispose of the empty containers.

“Every day, we have to bring in enough gas and chlorine just for the day,” Simon said. “It’s highly inefficient.”

The county was relying on revenue from the Officers Club to help pay for other functions that have continued under county management since the base closed July 2. In addition to the club, golf course and pool, the county is operating a horse stable, child-development center and storage lot for recreational vehicles.

Without that revenue, the county may have to reconsider its ability to keep the rest of the base open, Smith said.

“If we don’t get this resolved pretty soon, the whole thing will start to come apart,” he said.

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The alcohol and waste-disposal permits were not supposed to be a problem, Simon said. The county was given assurances by Navy officials on the West Coast that the approvals would be signed by July 3, he and Smith said.

But Navy officials in Washington balked after “a bad experience” at Mare Island Naval Air Station in Northern California, Smith said. A club of motorcycle riders held an event on the base after it was closed but before police powers had been transferred to the state.

The event resulted in arrests, which had to be handled by federal magistrates.

The slowness in resolving the police jurisdiction issue is even more troubling, Smith said, because it could jeopardize the county’s ability to sign a master lease with the Navy to take over the entire base.

The master lease is necessary before county officials can proceed with plans for air-cargo flights from the base.

Smith said South County airport foes have turned the issue into a “political football” in Sacramento by opposing retrocession, which is considered a procedural formality.

“I guess that’s their strategy,” he said.