I'm looking at a year-old brochure about the Great Park. Looks pretty cool. It features a drawing of blue skies, billowy clouds, birds flying by, people walking to and fro. It touts the projected opening date of the park's "first phase" in 2009.
Now I'm looking at another brochure, identifying a couple dozen features of that first phase, expected to be at varying stages of completion in 2009.
Well, it would have been nice.
Instead, Great Park planners -- who have filled our heads in recent years with wondrous visions of a world-class Orange County park to rival the country's best but so far have given us only balloon rides -- are thinking smaller now.
Not smaller as in forever, but for the time being. Instead of a fairly big rollout in 2009, we've got a first phase now limited to a "Preview Park." And despite the best efforts of park spokeswoman Marsha Burgess to explain it to me, I'm not sure exactly what that is.
But I must be candid: Picturing the "first phase" of a "Preview Park" doesn't exactly bowl me over. Call me when the 27-acre thing is done, which could be another couple years. Even so, that miniature park will hardly make a dent in the 1,350-acre Great Park we're waiting to see.
Speaking of which, I'm in my late 50s and in excellent health, but is it too cynical to ask if this park will be finished in my lifetime?
When park supporters sold it to voters as the alternative to the international airport on the former El Toro Marine Corps base, we assumed we'd be around to see it.
Right from the start, park supporters tossed out rosy timelines.
"Children will be playing in the county's largest sports park within three years of the sale of the property," boasted a colorful Irvine city mailer in late 2003. That projection would have the children frolicking this year.
Not so fast, kids.
The problem is that money to build the park was to have flowed from Lennar Corp.'s development around the park, but the housing slump has altered that.
The latest fallout was Lennar's decision last month to stop demolition of the runways, an obvious necessary step in the creation of the park.
Somewhere out there, the original airport backers are gloating.
I figured I'd find one Friday in Clarence Turner, a guy who had to listen to all the promises from the pro-park people in a long series of public meetings, media duels and countywide elections.
