(Late) Memorial Day Weekend Open Thread”: Cemetery Bill May Doom Cemetery

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The Great Park, with ARDA in pink, and the Golf Course in, um, one of the parts that looks like a golf course! (We’ll get back to you on that.)

[Ed. Note: I regret that I’ve been too tied up to write much recently.  I’ve been doing much of my writing on a closed Facebook page for those who will be involved in the upcoming California Democratic Party’s election for Chair — the one in which Chumley has endorsed Lenore Albert, which is surely a great way to burnish one’s reputation among delegates! — and haven’t been focusing here.  But I’ve also continued to follow events in Irvine, from the City Council appointment to the (not unrelated) placement of the Veteran’s Cemetery, if one ever gets built there (which, sad to say, I increasingly doubt.)  So Memorial Day — which in future years would likely have its largest celebration at such a site — truly invites no better topic of local interest than this.  — GAD]

Assemblwoman Sharon Quirk-Silva introduced a well-intentioned bill, AB 368, to ensure funding for a Verteran’s cemetery in Irvine.  There’s only one problem with it: it might instead kill off any chance of building one.

Some background that most (by maybe not all) readers will already know: Three Irvine sites have at various times received serious consideration as a site for the Irvine Veterans Cemetery.  (A fourth, an FBI firing range, never really got off the ground.)

(1) The Background

The first, ARDA — which stands for “Amended and Restated Development Agreement” — was the site at the take-off-and landing of the runway used by aircraft at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro (MCAS).  Because this is where planes were fueled, a lot of toxins were splilled on the ground, and it is considered to be a toxic waste dump.  Avoiding the costs of such a clean-up is why Irvine didn’t want it included in the land that was designated to become the Great Park.  ARDA was opposed from the start by Emil Haddad’s company Five Point, which owned adjacent land on which it was building and selling houses, targeting Chinese investors who wanted to move money out of China to burgeoning California.  ARDA was also opposed by other Asian residents in the area (proximity to a graveyard nearby was considered unlucky) and parents of students at Portola High School (in part because 21-gun salutes are not what people want to hear near schools these days); it was also considered an inferior choice by people who had read the Department of Veterans Affairs regulations for federal cemeteries and knew that they required that the cemeteries not be bisected by a road — such as Cadence Road, which bisects ARDA — and by people who preferred not to incure the cost of removing toxic waste, concrete, and dilapidated buildings from the site if there was a better option.

Deposed former Mayor Larry Agran, stinging from the City Councils tearing up his (almost all unrealized) plans for the Great Park (which had been a major theme used in removing him from office) loved the idea because (1) it could become a new anchor for the Great Park (despite not being within its approved borders) but also because (2) it would be a royal pain in the ass for Five Point, whom he blames in large part for his political demise.  If it did turn off present and potential residents, it would reduce the value of the nearby homes and possibly put Five Point at risk for lawsuits among those who had already bought, aside from reduce its expected profit from new homes.  At first the second reason seemed subsidiary; it now seems (to some of us observers, at least) to be his primary motivation.

Five Point at some point realized that it might be better to cooperate than fight.  It had some land down at the other end of the runway — past the runway, in fact, being area where an approaching or departing plane culd safely land, in the event of an emergency, without landing on the nearby I-5 freeway.  Like ARDA, it was officially part of MCAS El Toro — the area over which departing planes became safely airborne — but not part of the Great Park itself.  Because the point was that people and buildings shouldn’t be there, it was zoned for agricultural use — eventually for fields of strawberries.  Five Point was willing to swap this site near the junction of I-5  and I-405 — soon dubbed “Strawberry Fields” — to Irvine for the ARDA site; this became known as “The Swap.”  They would donate some amount for the first stage of construction and receive other considerations for re-zoning of ARDA — although even if they built a hotel there it would not clearly lead to more new traffic than would a veterans cemetery.  Being freeway-adjacent would provide greater visibility to the Memorial Park — as Costco, a Marriott hotel, and the Irvine Spectrum had discovered — and it was also right near the Irvine Metro Station.  Veterans were relieved to accept the idea.  Everybody wins, right?

Almost everybody,  “Everybody” would have included Five Point — and that Agran could not abide.  So he ginned up a referendum to repeal the Council’s vote for The Swap, marketed it under “Save the Great Park Cemetery” theme — which, again, ARDA was no more of than was Strawberry Fields — and got people to vote it down.  (There’s chatter that the powerful Irvine Company was supportive of Agran’s efforts to spike a windfall for its competitor.)

So, buoyed by a deceptive smear campaign, the referendum passed last year, and Strawberry Fields was out of the picture.  (I’m not sure why it still is — the City Council could pass a similar set of resolutions if it wished — but that seems to be so.)  Agran has tried to argue that the vote also therefore reinstated ARDA as a going concern, but I’m not aware of this view attracting support outside of his claque.

A third site was proposed — I think it came only after the referendum — by Strawberry Fields proponent Councilwoman Melissa Fox.  (Mayor Christins Shea may also have been in from the outset.)  This was to repurpose a planned golf course for the Great Park to being a Veterans Cemetery.  The Golf Course site is around the middle of the MCAS runway — and is the only one of the three that actually is part of the Great Park itself.  (As such, it would technically go against Agran’s dead and mostly decomposed “Master Plan” for the Great Park — but would be an actual “veteran’s cemetery in the Great Park,” so one would think he’d support it — if he’s not primarily just out to screw Five Point.)

Supervisor Don Wagner apparently thinks that a site in Anaheim Hills, just down the pike from the Riverside veterans cemetery, is still a possibility.  Anaheim Hills is not going to happen, Mr. Wagner.

And that takes us to the present day.

AB 368

This Assembly session, Quirk-Silva introduced a bill that would specify that a state-owned  Veterans Cemetery — remember the “Cadence Road” problem for federal ones — would be built on the (presumably remediated, though I don’t see any funding there) ARDA site.  Here’s the text of the initial bill (with internal spacing between sections added for clarity):

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1.

Section 1410 of the Military and Veterans Code is amended to read:

1410.

(a) (1) Pursuant to Section 1412, the department, in voluntary cooperation with local government entities in the County of Orange, shall acquire, study, design, develop, construct, and equip a state-owned and state-operated Southern California Veterans Cemetery, which shall be located at a site within the County of Orange.the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, on 125 acres known as the Amended and Restated Development Agreement Site in the Orange County Great Park in the City of Irvine.

(2) The department shall oversee and coordinate the acquisition, study, design, development, and construction of the cemetery.

(3) For purposes of this chapter, “department” means the Department of Veterans Affairs.

(b) (1) Subject to the eligibility requirements described in Section 2402 of Title 38 of the United States Code, as it may be amended, honorably discharged veterans, their spouses, and eligible dependent children are eligible for interment in the cemetery. The department shall establish a fee to be charged for interment of veteran spouses and eligible dependent children. The amount of the fee shall not exceed the reasonable costs to the department for interment in the cemetery.

(2) Subject to Section 1418, for the purposes of this subdivision, the department shall adopt regulations to specify the eligibility requirements for interment in the cemetery.

(3) All fees received pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be deposited in the Southern California Veterans Cemetery Perpetual Maintenance Fund created pursuant to Section 1412.