Michael Ellzey

City officials have tapped Michael Ellzey, a recently hired deputy executive, to be promoted to top administrator of the Orange County Great Park. Ellzey was promoted Thursday during a closed-door meeting of an executive search committee. The decision has yet to be approved by the park's governing board. If approved, Ellzey would take the helm of one of the nation's largest and most ambitious public works projects, converting 1,347 acres of the old El Toro Marine Corps base into a public park at a cost of more than $1.1 billion in public funds.

Irvine officials have tapped Michael Ellzey, a recently hired deputy executive, to be promoted to top administrator of the Orange County Great Park. Ellzey was promoted Thursday during a closed-door meeting of an executive search committee. The decision has yet to be approved by the park's governing board.

Irvine officials have tapped Michael Ellzey, a recently hired deputy executive, to be promoted to top administrator of the Orange County Great Park. Ellzey was promoted Thursday during a closed-door meeting of an executive search committee. The decision has yet to be approved by the park's governing board.

City officials have tapped Michael Ellzey, a recently hired deputy executive, to be promoted to top administrator of the Orange County Great Park. Ellzey was promoted Thursday during a closed-door meeting of an executive search committee. The decision has yet to be approved by the park's governing board. If approved, Ellzey would take the helm of one of the nation's largest and most ambitious public works projects, converting 1,347 acres of the old El Toro Marine Corps base into a public park at a cost of more than $1.1 billion in public funds.

The Orange County Great Park board appointed Michael D. Ellzey, a Tulare County administrator, as deputy chief executive Thursday, a week after two board members walked out of a closed-door meeting in which the new position was discussed. Irvine City Council members Christina Shea and Steven Choi left last week's meeting, saying they believed it was illegal to discuss in secret a position that didn't yet exist. Ellzey, a former executive director of the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority in San Francisco, was one of five finalists in a national chief executive search that came to an abrupt halt in November after two men with ties to Irvine City Hall rose to the top of the field of 150 candidates.

In another hang-up in the quest to build a massive park in Orange County, Irvine's Great Park board voted Thursday to suspend its contentious search for a chief executive until January. Two council members last year questioned the fairness of the city's national search for an executive to oversee the conversion of the former El Toro Marine base, after two men with ties to City Hall rose to the top of 150 candidates, then declined the position.

The Orange County Great Park will let two of its board members look at resumes it received in a disputed search for a chief executive last year, according to a settlement reached Thursday. The park board will allow Irvine City Council members Steven Choi and Christina Shea, in a closed session, to examine and make copies of resumes, e-mails, phone records and other documents from the job search, according to the settlement, which an Orange County Superior Court judge must approve.

The Orange County Great Park could be getting a great big markup. An oversight firm contends designers have underestimated the cost of building the public park by $377 million. Bovis Lend Lease, a firm Irvine pays to independently review the project, said the 1,347-acre park would cost more than $1.6 billion to build, not the $1.2 billion the project's designers have claimed, according to a report approved Tuesday by the Irvine City Council.