The Political Landscape:

Despite having no formal control over the Orange County Fair and Events Center, members of the Costa Mesa City Council have come out strongly in support of keeping the equestrian center where it is.

Recently the board that controls the fairgrounds voted to start a study that will look into the possibility of removing the 7.5-acre center, where people stable their horses and take riding lessons, from the fairgrounds to make way for extra parking.

And if council members had any doubts about how passionately people felt about keeping the equestrian center in town, those doubts may have been eliminated Tuesday night as almost a dozen horse trainers sat through four hours of a brutally technical study session dealing with completely unrelated issues just so they could be there at the very end when the council briefly debated the equestrian center.

At the meeting, Fair Chief Executive Steve Beazley encouraged the local horse community to get involved in trying to find a possible alternative site for an equestrian center, but a few of the council members were very adamant about it staying right where it is.

“I don’t want it moved to the Great Park or San Juan Capistrano because that means the residents of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa don’t have it in their community.

“I would encourage them to rise up and fight this instead of finding alternatives,” Councilwoman Katrina Foley said.

Both horse enthusiasts and other residents strongly oppose the proposal, saying that the equestrian center is one of the few facilities left in the county for horseback riding and that it is an invaluable resource in a community that is already mostly pavement.

“If indeed the answer is here in Costa Mesa, excellent,” Beazley said.

The final decision, however, will be up to the nine-member fair board, which is awaiting the results of a study that will examine the environmental impacts that paving over the equestrian center might have on the surrounding community as well as how the community feels about the idea.

One of the big factors in the decision is that parking is at a premium during the summer months, when the fair is in town, and it would be much more expensive for the fair to construct a multilevel parking structure than it would to turn the equestrian center into an extra lot.

“I think [the equestrian center] is a great asset for Costa Mesa, so I’d like to see it stay if there’s any way,” Councilman Eric Bever said.