Alicia Robinson
An outside-the-box proposal to sell the Orange County fairgrounds has
made it into a plan commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to
"blow up the boxes" of government inefficiency.
The idea to sell the fairgrounds, proposed by 70th District
Assemblyman John Campbell in April, was listed as an example of the
state's "underutilized or surplus property" in the California
Performance Review, a voluminous report on how the state could
potentially save $32 billion over the next five years.
The governor commissioned the report, and the legislature must
decide whether to adopt it as a whole or in part, but because the
legislative session ends Aug. 31, lawmakers won't take up the issue
until 2005.
When Campbell suggested the sale of the 190-acre property, he
thought it could bring as much as $300 million to help fill the
state's budget gap, but some of that would have been devoted to
relocating the fair facilities to Irvine's Great Park. Those working
on the governor's report apparently liked the idea, though their
estimate of the sale price was about $230 million and didn't mention
moving the fair.
Campbell didn't push for the proposal to be included in the report
and only found out Tuesday it was in there, he said.
"I think it means it has a higher profile than I thought within
the administration," he said.
Costa Mesa officials haven't changed their position opposing the
fairgrounds sale, but the latest developments may spur them to be
more vocal. Despite concerns about the loss of community activities
and revenue, the City Council didn't take an official stance on the
proposal earlier because they weren't sure if it was even legally
possible, City Manager Allan Roeder said.
"Given the city's opposition, we thought there was a good
possibility that the idea would simply go away," he said. "With this
now in the California Performance Review, that may well cause us to
take a change in that posture, knowing that it has been committed as
part of a specific proposal."
The report makes a sound overall proposal to streamline how the
state identifies and disposes of underused land, Roeder said, but it
doesn't address the impacts to Costa Mesa. The city would lose about
$600,000 a year in sales tax revenue from fairgrounds activities as
well as employment and peripheral income from tourism, and having the
facilities and events the fairgrounds offers is highly valued by the
community, he said.
It's possible the fair won't move. The report still has a lengthy
