Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/fivepoint-communities/)
Nick Berardino, a longtime union activist in Orange County, OC Fair Board member and U.S. Marine Vietnam combat veteran, writes that Irvine voters should endorse Measure B to create a veterans cemetery at a Strawberry fields site near the 405 and 5 freeway interchanges.
Irvine voters will decide June 5 whether Orange County’s first veterans cemetery will be near the heart of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro or on the edge of the onetime base near the interchange of the 5 and 405 freeways.
The Irvine City Council is rumored to have scheduled a closed session discussion of the veterans cemetery during its Sept. 26 meeting. The discussion reportedly will include using 100 acres of the veterans cemetery land for hotels, homes or other commercial purposes until the land is needed to bury veterans.
A split Irvine City Council has begun a land swap that will move the site from a central part of the former El Toro Marine base to strawberry fields near the interchange of the 5 and 405 freeways.
The Irvine City Council, in a special meeting as soon as Tuesday, is likely to move a proposed veterans cemetery from the heart of the old El Toro Marine Base to a developer-owned strawberry field next to the 5 and 405 freeways.
During a Friday press conference at the Great Park, Gov. Jerry Brown spoke to reporters after touring two competing sites for a veterans’ cemetery. While supportive of local decision making, Brown remarked about a site near the I-5 Freeway saying he liked the Strawberry fields. A final decision on the location could be reached by June.
Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled to be in Irvine Friday for a tour of two sites for a proposed veteran’s cemetery, but not all City Council members were invited and it’s not clear who he is talking to.
Developer FivePoint Communities has sent the Irvine City Council its general proposal for moving the proposed Orange County veterans cemetery from the city’s Great Park to a site near the interchange of the 5 and 405 freeways.
Brown and two top Assembly Democratic leaders will visit the proposed veterans cemetery site at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Base in Irvine within the next several weeks.
A proposed land swap would have resolved concerns from Chinese home buyers that living next to a cemetery is bad feng shui. But A majority of council members said changing course might derail the cemetery altogether.