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the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station by the US Navy, with Five Point responsible for developing the Great Park Neighborhoods and the city responsible for developing the Orange County Great Park.
While initially the housing development was to be built first, and the resulting tax revenue would help fund the park, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 stalled the project.
“The whole country realized that Lehman was an 8.5 earthquake that was going to shake the whole world, and it didn’t matter anymore if you were residential, commercial, institutional or anything else — everything was connected,” Haddad said. “That obviously meant that we had to go back to the drawing board with city staff and revisit our thinking.”
In August 2009, council members approved an amended development agreement that would require that Five Point provide $40 million in park infrastructure and three months later made the decision to go ahead with a nearly $70-million development plan of the Western sector of the park.
“Clearly, if we had not gone ahead with our comprehensive master plan, if we had not decided to activate some small portion of the great park, we would have more money in the bank right now,” said Councilman Larry Agran, chairman of the Great Park Corp. “But, we would be starting from zero.”
While members of the Great Park Board were hard-pressed to admit any mistakes, Councilwoman Beth Krom credited current development at the park in playing a role in securing the restructuring agreement and pointed out the complexity of building a park twice the size of New York’s Central Park.
“Had we not gone forward with the public side of the project … I think it would have been more difficult for Five Point Communities to sell to their financial backers the viability of the project,” Krom said.
“There’s no roadmap, no magic wand, no crystal ball, no big book of How to Build a Great Metropolitan Park,” Krom later continued.
“So nobody gets it right 100 [%] of the time, but I really believe that we have been fortunate to have a city that has been focused in a particular direction and has remained committed.”
The completion of public hearings and city approvals is expected by late summer 2011.
“I hope that we never have another question to answer of, ‘Where is the great park?’ and, ‘Where are we in the process?’ and ‘When will it be built?’” Haddad said.
