Tustin Marine Corps Air Station

Hopes for resolving a stubborn dispute between Tustin and two Santa Ana school districts over land at the closed Tustin Marine base evaporated this week after Tustin presented its final offer and the districts rebuffed it. "We're at a standstill," attorney Ruben A. Smith, representing the Santa Ana Unified School District, said Tuesday. "You can't negotiate with yourself." Tustin made significant concessions in recent weeks but isn't willing to go further, City Manager William A. Huston said.

They are neighbors, but these days, Santa Ana and Tustin are far from neighborly. Particularly when it comes to deciding the future of the mothballed Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility. And don't look for the relationship to improve any time soon. When the Department of the Navy approved Tustin's reuse plan for the 1,561-acre former helicopter base Feb.

Santa Ana school officials sued the city of Tustin on Thursday, saying a $200-million redevelopment plan for the closed Tustin Marine base will further burden Santa Ana's already packed schools. The lawsuit, which invokes the California Environmental Quality Act, comes as the cities negotiate over how much land, if any, the Santa Ana Unified School District and the Rancho Santiago Community College District will be allocated for a school on the closed base.

Navy officials have approved a controversial plan by the city of Tustin to redevelop the closed Marine helicopter base there, a proposal that denies two Santa Ana school districts space for a kindergarten-through-college campus. The federal approval, called a record of decision, was signed Friday in Washington by Duncan Holaday, Navy deputy assistant secretary for installations and facilities. It will become official when it is posted in the Federal Register next week.

Assemblyman Lou Correa introduced a bill Thursday that would force Tustin to give Santa Ana schools a parcel of former military land to build a kindergarten-through-college campus. Tustin officials responded angrily, saying the move by Correa (D-Anaheim) threatens their negotiations with the Santa Ana Unified school and Rancho Santiago Community College districts over as much as 122 acres of Tustin Marine Air Base, which closed in 1999.

Backers of a long-stalled 192-bed homeless shelter at the closed Tustin Marine Corps base said they believe their project finally will be green-lighted in the wake of President Bush's pledge Monday to funnel more public money and other help to faith-based agencies for social services. Jim Palmer, president of the Orange County Rescue Mission, said he has waited four years to have the Secretary of the Navy sign away the deed to the 6.1 acres.

A legal challenge by the cities of Lake Forest and Irvine to force a state panel to ease development restrictions around the closed El Toro and Tustin Marine bases was denied this week by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Judge Chris R. Conway upheld the authority of the Airport Land Use Commission to continue barring the construction of homes and limiting other building near the former bases, which closed in July 1999.

The battle over redevelopment of the shuttered Tustin Marine air base escalated early Wednesday, when the Tustin City Council approved a plan that did not include land for a kindergarten-through-college campus for Santa Ana Unified School District. In a packed meeting that started Tuesday night and stretched past 2 a.

Sixty people packed Tustin City Council chambers Tuesday to argue for or against a sweeping plan to develop the city's former Marine helicopter base into neighborhoods of luxury homes, a golf course and business parks. The issue, which has been debated for more than six years, drew impassioned testimony from opponents of the plan, chiefly two Santa Ana school districts that want a chunk of the base for a new kindergarten-through-college campus.