[CPEO-MEF] Lennar wins El Toro auction

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

One Bidder Wins It All at El Toro

Home builder Lennar will buy 3,718 acres on O.C.'s closed base for
$649.5 million, more than the minimum but less than some expected.

By Jean O. Pasco
Los Angeles Times 
February 17, 2005

The nation's third-largest home builder won an unprecedented federal
auction Wednesday to buy the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in
Irvine, setting the stage for 3,400 new homes in the heart of Orange
County and dashing the last hopes for an international airport there.

Bidding $649.5 million for 3,718 acres, Miami-based Lennar Corp. won the
property in an online auction that the Defense Department has pledged to
use as a model for the sale of future closed military bases. Previously,
closed bases were transferred to local governments at little or no cost.

The auction brought in $124.5 million more than the minimum bids the
Navy had set, but the proceeds are far less than the $800 million to
$1.2 billion some real estate analysts had expected the land would fetch.

The base's purchase by Lennar "will serve as a model for cooperation
between the federal government, local government and the private
sector," said Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, the architect of the El
Toro redevelopment.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-eltoro17feb17,1,4447445.story?coll=la-news-state

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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