Cuts likely in El Morro work

The California Parks Department will scale back its plans to turn El

Morro Village into a public campground because bids for the project

came in between $3 million and $5.4 million higher than expected.

Since their leases expired last year, residents have been fighting

eviction from El Morro Village mobile-home park, which sits on

state-owned land at Crystal Cove State Park. The state wants to raze

the mobile homes and create a 60-unit campground with a 200-space

parking lot.

The state has continued to plan for the campground while it

battles with residents in court. Parks officials on June 29 took

three bids for the park construction, with the highest at $15.8

million, said Richard Rozzelle, acting superintendent for the state

parks’ Orange Coast district.

In 2003, the parks department planned to set aside $10.4 million

for construction, state parks spokesman Roy Stearns said. The bids

exceeded that estimate for two reasons: Construction costs are

constantly rising, and contractors included the cost to remove the

mobile homes in their bids, Stearns said.

According to the terms of their leases with the state, residents

are responsible for removing their own homes. But since the homes are

still on the land, contractors factored their removal into their cost

estimates.

In light of the higher figures, parks officials have trimmed back

the project. They’ve cut an interpretive center, a lifeguard

headquarters, two restroom buildings and some creek restoration work.

Those items will become part of a second phase of the project, but

there’s no timeline or funding for it yet, Rozzelle said.

In November the state will seek new bids for the campground, the

parking lot, the beach restoration and some restrooms.

“This is a good alternative because it gets the public what

they’ve been waiting for, which is access and a new public

campground,” Stearns said.

News of the cost overrun didn’t surprise Newport Beach Assemblyman

Chuck DeVore. He wrote a letter to state Resources Agency Secretary

Mike Chrisman a month ago asking about the bids, and he will include

El Morro costs when he requests a state audit of projects at Crystal

Cove, he said.

DeVore’s assembly district includes the park. He jumped into the

El Morro fray in February with two bills that would have given

residents new leases, letting the state use the rent money to ease

its budget crunch.

He has since criticized an ongoing project to restore cottages in

the state park’s historic district. That restoration project also

exceeded its budget.

In DeVore’s view, starting a project and then asking for more

money before its completion has become a pattern for the state parks

department.

“As policymakers, it doesn’t do us any good to approve

multimillion dollar projects and then find out in the middle of the

project, oh yeah, we need several million more dollars,” DeVore said.

“Once you’re in the middle of the project, what do you do?”

DeVore plans to ask the state Joint Legislative Audit Committee

for the Crystal Cove audit in September.

But Stearns said until the residents move out of El Morro, the

park project’s cost will likely continue to increase.

“As long as they’re there, we’re prevented from building a park

and construction-cost inflation keeps going up,” he said.

The case between the state parks department and El Morro Village

Inc., which manages the mobile-home park, is set for trial Aug. 23 in

Orange County Superior Court. That case is one of a number of pending

court cases between the state and tenants of mobile homes.