The Long Arm of LA

When we lived in San Jose, our city had a municipal inferiority complex against San Francisco -- we've got more people than them! We've got more jobs than them! So why is it that they call themselves "The City", and nobody calls us anything?

Now that we're living in Orange County, we've got a countywide inferiority complex against Los Angeles. This week LA delivered a couple of swift kicks to OC's psyche:

• Shelby already mentioned the fact that the owner of the World-Series-Champions-of-a-couple-years-ago Anaheim Angels decided to rename his team the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" this week. Sports fans across the county are upset, but more importantly, the City of Anaheim is not pleased. The city, having fairly recently sunk $20 million into improvements at Angel Stadium, is planning on taking the Angels to court, claiming that the name change violates the Angels' stadium lease.

  Good for the city! Giveaways to pro-sports teams have to be one of the stupidest municipal handouts out there, and it's good to finally see a city -- my city! -- showing enough backbone to demand something in exchange for shoveling its cash into the pockets of an entity that doesn't need it. Hopefully other MLB teams will take note of this incident before whining to their host cities that their stadium needs publicly-financed luxury skyboxes or gold-plated bathroom fixtures -- and hopefully any unpleasantness with the Angels will make Anaheim think twice about their urgency to attract an NFL team to our area.

• El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, 4700 acres in the middle of southern Orange County, was closed in 1999. The Navy was supposed to start selling off parts of El Toro to commercial developers tomorrow, with the remainder to be converted into the "Orange County Great Park". Today, the City of Los Angeles revealed its desire to lease the entirety of El Toro from the federal government, so as to reopen the property as a civilian passenger and cargo airport. (LA is facing big legal troubles as they seek to expand LAX; the theory is that having another airport in the region will take off some of the expansionary pressure.)

  I don't have any problems with an airport continuing to exist at El Toro (I just bought a house by the railroad tracks, so I can afford to be smug at idiots who bought a house by an airport carping and whining at the fact that there might continue to be an airport there!), and I think that OC will need a new airport to replace our anemic John Wayne Airport sooner rather than later, but county voters have firmly indicated their wish for El Toro to move on to other uses. This seems like a audaciously big reach for LA -- but then again, the city has some experience at operating property far outside its municipal borders in the face of increasingly-hostile opposition.

Posted by Kevin at January 4, 2005 02:22 PM