Resigners: Goals fell to division

The nonprofit formed to buy and preserve the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa has virtually no chance of achieving its goal after community support dried up and four of its six members resigned, former and current foundation members said Wednesday.

Dale Dykema, Joyce Tucker, Gary Hayakawa and David Ellis have resigned their seats on the Orange County Fair & Event Center Foundation’s board of directors. Only Mary Young and Kristina Dodge, the foundation’s chair, remain.

Dodge is expected to release a statement today on the foundation board’s future.

With only two people left, the foundation’s options appear few: Give up trying to buy the 150-acre fairgrounds and do something else, or dissolve the foundation altogether.

Dykema, who resigned in an e-mail three weeks ago, said he had doubts about the board’s prospect for success from the beginning.

“The nonprofit, initially, I didn’t think was going to go anywhere. I thought, ‘Fine, if you want go ahead, fine. But I don’t see much of a chance of it being accomplished,’” Dykema said. “Then when the opponents started beating on the politicians, it got to a point where there was no support anywhere except from the six of us board members.”

Because of California’s budget crisis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put the fairgrounds up for sale earlier this year. Local politicians scrambled to find a way to try and preserve the fairgrounds before it is sold next year to the highest bidder and possibly developed. The Orange County Fair Board created the nonprofit, which initially had support from the county Board of Supervisors and the Costa Mesa City Council, to try to buy the property, Ellis said.

Both he and Dykema said the momentum died, and that community support vanished. The mission for many in Orange County then turned to stopping the sale altogether.

Dykema points to Orange County Marketplace president Jeff Teller and Orange County Board of Supervisor counsel Nicholas Crisos’ letter to the state attorney general and the district attorney as the catalyst for the foundation’s floundering.