No answers until June. After a long and confusing meeting, the Irvine City Council voted to both (1) consider putting up $40 million of it’s own money to build the cemetery on the current proposed site and (2) open negotiations on a land swap that would build the cemetery on a site next to the 5 freeway.
The former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro is outlined in yellow. The state-approved site of the cemetery is in orange. The proposed new site of the cemetery, given a land swap, is in blue. The FBI site is in green. The 5 and 405 are both highlighted in pink. Their junction, the “El Toro Y,” is at the western tip of the site in blue — what one might call the “Gateway to Irvine.”
As Greg already discussed, there are two plans on the table. Jeff Lalloway proposes to use Irvine money to move forward on the current “ARDA”site, while Christina Shea‘s favors a land swap with Five Points to build the cemetery next to the 5 freeway.
After over an hour of public comment, and increasingly heated exchanges between Shea and Lalloway, Christina Shea put forth a motion to start land swap negotiations with Five Points. Jeff Lalloway put forward a substitute motion to allocate $38 million immediately and not proceed with the Five Points negotiation. Jeff Lalloway’s substitute motion passed with support from Lynn Schott and Melissa Fox.
Next, Melissa said she misunderstood what she was voting for, put forth a motion to reconsider, which passed. She then put forth an new substitute motion that the city pursue both options and try again in June. This motion passed with support from Mayor Don Wagner and Christina Shea. It was a confusing 10 minutes.
Key points:
- Melissa has been a steadfast supporter of veterans cemetery since it was twinkle in Larry Agran‘s cynical eye. Her confusion seemed genuine, as did her strong desire to get the cemetery built..
- Don Wagner and Christina Shea were clearly in favor of the proposed Five Points land swap. That should make one nervous. While I am a big Christina supporter, she has not been a strong supporter of the cemetery. Also, I have already called Don Wager a “wholly owned subsidiary of Five Points” on this blog, which tonight seemed to reconfirm
- Jeff, in keeping with his already discussed poor political skills, did not seem to have lined up the necessary support ahead of time. Somebody really needs to give him a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- Lynn Schott mostly kept quiet, but voted with Lalloway on the three motions that mattered.
- Jeff’s plan — to spend $40 million of Irvine’s own money immediately — is risky because the current price tag is $72 million, and the state is showing little inclination to pony up the difference.
- Christina’s plan is risky because the Five Points “plan” was maddeningly scant on actual details or bona fide commitments.
The Irvine politics on this are just plain weird. The current cemetery plan got rolling as a Larry Agran stratagem to help Melissa Fox unseat Jeff Lalloway (and help fellow Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva.) His cemetery proposal was a deeply cynical move because Larry actively suppressed plans for a cemetery when he was in charge of the Great Park. But building this cemetery is the right thing to do, so even Irvine’s “right wingers” (your humble blogger included) supported Larry’s cemetery plan, to the clear consternation of the developer-backed majority. Jeff Lalloway was the crucial vote in getting the cemetery plan moving. Then, when Jeff was head of the ad-hoc committee for the cemetery, he did very little to move it forward. I wanted to attend the meetings, but after extensive help from a city staffer, determined meetings weren’t being held and the committee in fact had gotten folded in the Christina’s Veterans committee, which mostly focuses on housing issues. Moving to the present, Don Wagner clearly favors the Five Point’s swap, which Jeff Lalloway completely opposes. Which is odd, because these are the two current council members that Five Points has spent money supporting in recent elections.
Five Points and its Irvine front man Patrick Strader hate, hate, hate the cemetery and wish it would just go away, so their motives in offering this swap should be critically examined. Yet, Five Points has good reasons to want this swap to go through, quickly. The current cemetery plan is hurting home sales with their key customers — mainland Chinese — so getting the cemetery moved to the opposite side of the Great Park boosts their bottom line immediately.
Confused? I am. But I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for the report, Tyler! As I mention in a comment in response to Katherine Daigle on the other post, I think that the Council played this very will by inviting what is in effect a bidding war.
You’re wrong about something very central and significant, though — which, if you read my disclaimer on the other post, I know because I was there at the inception.
You write:
The cemetery plan was not “an Agran stratagem for winning a seat for Fox on the Council” — although Fox’s support of the plan was probably critical in forcing Lalloway to come out in support of it. Nor was it at all cynical. It was a means of recouping at least a partial victory for the Great Park in the wake of a bitter defeat to the Great Park’s Master Plan. And he favored it for the right reason: that, after the Council majority had taken the “greatness” out of what was to be the “Great Park,” the veterans cemetery was a way of inserting some of that “Greatness” back in.
Was he doing it out of pride or ego as opposed to favoring it on the merits? I don’t know that one can separate them: he had long been in love with the idea of the Great Park not only because it would be “his legacy,” but because he believed that it would be very good for the City of Irvine (and beyond.) Whatever role pride played in it, it was not like Steve Choi wanting to build a library as a monument to himself. It was about creating something legitimately great — even you think so!
Here’s the timeline: Bill Cook had been promoting the idea of an OC Great Park for years. He got involved with Brian Chuchua, who talked to me about it at length in December 2013. (The Great Park location was not part of that discussion — it never had been possible because Agran wanted to stick precisely to the Master Plan and it was not part of that plan.)
In mid-December, the day of the announcement that Sharon would be Chairing the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee, she came to the OCLF Christmas Party and we saw each other. She informed me of her appointment; I congratulated her and we discussed what one might accomplish in that position. I told her that I knew that a group of veterans was pushing for a veterans cemetery in OC and explained a little of why. She was very intrigued.
I spotted Agran and Krom across the room, looking sort of sullen, and I suggested to her that now that the Master Plan was wrecked Agran might be willing to contemplate building a veterans cemetery in the Great Park. We walked over there, I said hello and told them Sharon’s good news, and then I walked away. They had an animated and obviously productive discussion, and Agran and Sharon took it from there, masterfully.
It was never about Melissa Fox. It was about bringing something of high quality and prestige to the Great Park itself. To me, that’s the opposite of cynical — although it never would have happened had the Master Plan not been destroyed shortly before.
I know that my other post is long, but you might enjoy reading it more fully, if you haven’t. The politics of it are that Agran wants to protect his plan — which he thinks that others are trying to kill — and may also be motivated to stick Five Point to the wall. The veterans don’t care about how much Five Point makes — they care about the quality of the project, and for them the prominent location adjacent to the freeway (which would be lousy for luxury homes) is a big bonus. Fox agrees with the veterans and will push for whatever turns out to be the best deal for them, regardless of the effect on Five Point, Agran, or anyone else.
I should add that, while I’m not exactly buddies with Melissa and her husband these days, I’m perfectly willing to give her due credit when she’s doing the right thing. And here, she is doing so. I hope that Five Point sweetens its deal enough to seal it.
We’ve disagreed about Larry’s motives before.
I’ve read the city contract from 2006. I’ve spent half an hour with city staff tracking down the fate of that contract
The evidence is overwhelming: Mr Agran opposed a cemetery at the Great Park when he was in control of the Great Park planning process.
As a lawyer, I would expect you to be more respectful of the evidence 8)
You are also correct that Larry was absolutely central in getting the veterans cemetery program moving. I believe that Larry is sincere about getting this cemetery built. But if supporting our Veterans with the cemetery was Mr Agran’s is primary motivation, the cemetery would have appeared somewhere is his $40 million of planning documents, or he would have mentioned it in one of his innumerable, interminable “State of the Park” speeches.
It did not and he did not.
Only when he was out of power and the Veterans Cemetery became an effective weapon against his political opponents did Draft-Dodger Larry find his patriotism
I stand by my claim about Mr Agran’s motivations: Cynical politics.
Which is totally fine. I don’t care what anybody’s motivation is, so long as this Veterans Cemetery gets built.
He DID oppose it in 2006. I conceded that. Until the Master Plan for the Great Park was trashed, he did not support ANY substantive changes to the Master Plan. (Why it wasn’t in the Master Plan to begin with, I do not know, but one reason was likely that there was virtually no public pressure to include it. Bill Cook was a lonely voice for this cause for a long time.) BUT, once the Master Plan was trashed, Agran THEN looked to salvage the prestige of the Great Park as best he could. Its political implications, which (to the extent they existed) were neutralized by Lalloway’s siding with Agran, were secondary at best. The glory of Great Park was the legacy he cared — far more than Melissa Fox being elected to City Council.
(“Draft dodger”? You do know that Agran *is himself* a veteran, right? You ought to be able to defend your position without cheap shots against his patriotism.)
*Why does “Nero fiddles while Rome burns…” come to mind. “The obfuscation game” goes on just like it always has in “the most wonderfully planned community in America”… When is someone going to call Tony Moisio and ask him to either help with this or not?
Maybe that is what has really happened, but it all gets down to trying to delay, delay and delay…..until everyone gets worn out. The Vet Cemetary however may be a different breed of cat. We need to cut through Procedure and get the Results in a timely fashion for once. Put it in ARDA…put it by the Freeway….put it in Norco……will be next.
Nonsense and we suppose we just need the Luis Echeverria solution. Stake out the 1000 acrea land piece for the Unwed Mothers of Cozumel, put the little red flags on the four corners and put the cement edifice up: “Future Home of the Unwed Mothers of Cozumel 1967….. President of Mexico Luis Echevveria” Yep, that land is still unfunded and still staked out. Good Grief….any leadership at all out there? Meanwhile the Irvine Land Developers say: “Where are we going to put our skyscrapers then – if we have to buy a Cemetary? There goes the property values!”