Policy pilots missed their chance at Miramar

By: MARK WALKER - Staff Writer | Saturday, July 30, 2005 9:05 PM PDT ∞

Nestled between two freeways in the center of the county, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station is the "obvious solution" to future airport needs.

That's the conclusion reached by a group of 735 county residents following a month-long discussion facilitated by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

But the policy pilots, including those at the authority, never even revved the engines on that argument this year, effectively grounding the idea of converting Miramar into a civilian airport or joint-use airport serving military and commercial aviation.

The question now is whether it is too late for Miramar to be recruited as the region's larger, dual-runway airport and whether the political will to seek the base's conversion will ever materialize.

Local decision makers could have asked for Miramar. The law that governs an ongoing round of base closures allows communities to petition the Pentagon to close a base and hand it over for what civic leaders believe would be the best use.

One city, the Contra Costa County town of Concord, made such a request. Civic leaders petitioned to have the inland portion of a 12,000-acre naval weapons station there shuttered. Hemmed in by surrounding cities, Concord wants the land for new homes, parks and a transit center.

And guess what? When the Pentagon's closure recommendations to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, known as BRAC, came out in May, Concord appeared on the list.

"If a community wanted a base to close, this certainly would have been the time to ask for it," said Christopher Hellman, a base closure specialist with the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C., a group that monitors defense issues and works to eliminate nuclear weapons. "The military is not precluded from closing bases outside of BRAC, but this was the golden moment if community leaders wanted to seize it."

The airport authority board certainly wasn't going to ask for Miramar, even if it ultimately recommends that county residents agree to pursue the base for a new airport when the issue goes to a vote in November 2006.

The didn't ask because the authority bowed to pressure from lawmakers earlier this year and agreed not to even talk about ---- let alone study ---- the military sites, including Miramar, on its list of potential new airport sites.

Two authority board members, Xema Jacobson and Mary Sessom, talked about Miramar last week as a possibility a decade or two down the road. But the need to plan for a new airport is now, not later, Sessom said.

"I feel very strongly that we can't put off this decision until we know what the Marines are doing in 15 or 20 years," said Sessom, mayor of Lemon Grove.

Marines don't retreat

The Marines, of course, do not give up ground easily. Marine Corps officials have consistently said Miramar is integral to their West Coast flight operations and as a place for Navy fighter pilots to practice simulated carrier landings and takeoffs.

The federal government has invested more than $1.5 billion in the 23,000-acre base since the Marines assumed it from the Navy in 1997. That alone makes the chances of Miramar being converted to a civilian airport remote, according to a former commander of the Marine Corps' West Coast air operations.

Retired Maj. Gen. Dick Cook of Vista said last week that he believes the region lost its chance to get Miramar a decade ago when the Navy was getting ready to pull out of the base.

Cook was part of a contingent of military officers who tried to convince then-San Diego Mayor Susan Golding to pursue the base as a new airport site.

"We argued that Lindbergh should be closed and Miramar made the international airport for San Diego County," Cook said. "My feeling then and still is that it would have been the greatest economic development tool in San Diego since World War II."

Besides the base improvements, Cook said the ongoing conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the specter of trouble with North Korea or China, the number of military units assigned to Miramar and the buildup of homes are each major obstacles to converting the base.

"I think the opportunity has been lost unless you utilize it for some kind of joint use," he said. "This place is growing like hell, and the question is what are we going to do for an airport?

"What bothers me is that the politicians and others seem to look to the federal government for a solution to a problem that has largely been a lack of vision," Cook said.

That ballot issue

The legislation that established the authority requires it to make a recommendation on how to accommodate the 35 million people forecasts say will fly in and out of San Diego by the year 2030.

While Sessom said she can envision the possibility of two or three sites on the 2006 advisory ballot, Jacobson said her preference is for a single site, be it expansion of Lindbergh, a new airport in the East County town of Campo or some other site.

"I don't know what it will say yet, but I want an up-or-down vote on one site," Jacobson said.

Penned in by the ocean, the adjacent Marine Corps Recruit Depot and surrounding homes, businesses and a freeway, Lindbergh Field's single runway will soon be unable to handle increases in airline passenger and cargo load.

The authority is working on scenarios that would bracket the recruit depot with a second runway. That plan also would require removing more than 300 homes, hundreds of businesses and more than 10,000 people.

And while the authority refused to ask the Pentagon to shut down the recruit depot to make way for an airport expansion, the BRAC Commission wasn't so shy. Commission Chairman Anthony Principi, a Rancho Santa Fe native, pressed the Marine Corps but ultimately agreed with its arguments that it needs the depot as well as a second training facility on the East Coast.

A later BRAC?

Carlton Meyer, a former Marine Corps officer who operates the Web site http://www.g2mil.com, also has long argued that Miramar should be San Diego's new airport.

Meyer suggests moving the helicopters and the headquarters of the 3rd Marine Air Wing back to Camp Pendleton and the aircraft groups to Lemoore Naval Air Station in the San Joaquin Valley or the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz.

Lemoore is home to the Strike Fighter Wing for the Pacific Fleet and the carrier air wing groups.

Hellman, the BRAC expert, said this round ---- the first since 1995 ---- is more about realignments than closures. A future BRAC, one that could reopen the door for a shot at obtaining Miramar, would require congressional approval.

"The requirement will always be there to move people around on the chessboard," he said. "The question is will the military feel the need to close more bases in the future."

Erik Bruvold, vice president of public policy at the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, led the effort to keep local bases off the BRAC list.

Bruvold did not dispute the notion that Lindbergh could continue as is while local leaders work with the military on securing Miramar.

"That is an issue the community has to grapple with," he said.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked if he anticipated another BRAC, his response was he would have to wait and see, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said Thursday.

John Chalker, head of a group of business and labor interests called Alliance in Support of Airport Progress in the 21st Century, which supports construction of a new airport, said the authority erred when it bowed to political pressure regarding its virtual hands-off policy on military bases while BRAC is under way.

Miramar, he said, needs to be seriously considered. He pointed out that the closure commission added Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia to its list of possible closures, a move that shows that sites such as an active airfield are not immune.

"No base is or should be off-limits," Chalker said.

Sessom pointed out that current planning efforts regarding housing and transportation are aimed at managing and preparing for growth in the next two decades. The same is true for airport planning, she said.

"The region needs to come to grips with its needs now," she said. "We have to figure out how we are going to deal with our air and transportation and housing needs because it all has to fit. The time has come to answer all of those questions together."

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.