Plans for a luxury executive jet hangar at John Wayne Airport have been put on hold.
Newport Beach-based Legacy Aviation LLC halted its plans amid opposition from neighboring cities and residents that made the hangar more expensive than planned, a source familiar with the project said.
Legacy Aviation had planned to build a 53,000-square-foot hangar catering to executives at the edge of the airport near Costa Mesa.
The $10 million project called for a hangar with room for eight corporate jets, a 10,000-square-foot, two-story office building and covered parking for cars.
A source familiar with the project said the developer didn’t expect the amount of effort involved in dealing with airport officials, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa as well as activist groups that oppose any expansion of John Wayne Airport.
The process makes developing a hangar more costly and complicated than at other airports, the source said.
“The county went through a kind of civil war over El Toro,” said Richard Janisse, executive vice president at Legacy Aviation. “There are still people out there who get real emotional about any type of development associated with the airport.”
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a debate over turning the former El Toro Marine base into a commercial airport divided the county. Those around John Wayne generally supported an El Toro airport, while South County residents were largely opposed to it.
The issue was settled in 2001 with a vote in favor of a plan to redevelop the site as homes, commercial space, parks and other public uses.
Residents in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach long have fought any expansion of John Wayne, which has a curfew and is limited to 10.3 million passengers a year.
The airport currently is undergoing a terminal expansion and other improvements.
Executive Jets
Legacy Aviation proposed the executive jet hangar in early March to Costa Mesa officials and met with opposition over what was seen as an expansion of the airport.
The Legacy Air Center would have incorporated an adjacent two acres within Costa Mesa as part of the airport, which sits on county land surrounded by Costa Mesa, Irvine and Newport Beach.
The company argued the hangar would serve existing executive jet traffic and would
not expand passenger operations at John Wayne.
Legacy Aviation had been prepared to work with the cities and activists in the next several months with presentations and meetings, according to a source. Those meetings are off for now.
The company had argued the project would benefit the county’s economy and reduce executive jet traffic at the airport.
Some executives keep jets at Long Beach Airport and fly them back and forth to John Wayne, according to Janisse.
“By bringing those planes stored in Long Beach to John Wayne, we’re going to de-crease the number of operations that they fly per year,” he said before plans for the hangar were put on hold.
The company argued that the hangar would have added to the county’s revenue with plans to lease the land for an estimated $100,000 a year. Property taxes on planes housed at Legacy Air Center would have added an additional $2 million, it said.
The hangar was planned for an empty lot slated for an airport maintenance building.
The $5 million maintenance facility still is planned at 3180 Airway Ave. in Costa Mesa.
Legacy Aviation had hoped to work with the airport to relocate the planned maintenance facility to an existing building nearby.
That would have saved the county about $3 million in development costs, according to Legacy Aviation.
Legacy Air Center was a dream project for executives and companies with jets, according to Janisse.
“There is more demand for hangars than there are hangars available,” he said.
Janisse compared the planned hangar to Hangar 25, the corporate jet hangar built by Los Angeles-based Shangri-La Construction LP that caters to executives at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.
“Legacy Air Center would not have been some metal building but a premium building with top-notch security and landscaping,” Janisse said.
Legacy Aviation had eight jets ready to park at Legacy Air Center, four of which now are kept elsewhere at John Wayne, Janisse said.
He declined to say who owns the jets.
“They are movers and shakers in the county,” he said.
The company is re-evaluating its plans for the hangar and could bring the proposal back in the next several months, he said.
Legacy Aviation is in the planning stages on developing three similar hangars at other airports around the country, according to Janisse.
