TAIT Featured In The Orange County Register
County Regional Park Use Discussed for Tustin Marine Base
The historic north blimp hangar at the former USMC Tustin military base could have an important community future in addition to its distinguished service past as a home to World War II-era blimps and a training ground for helicopter pilots who served in Vietnam and Desert Storm. It may serve the community as a regional park, providing a possible event venue, if the concept plan prepared by TAIT for OC Parks is approved by the County Board of Supervisors in January of 2012.
TAIT was retained by OC Parks in December 2010 to create a conceptual plan for an 84.5-acre County regional park, develop a reuse concept for the existing northern hangar and provide a cost estimate for the proposed park. The regional park would seek to provide recreational open space and preserve the historical nature of the site which has been documented in the County of Orange and City of Tustin 2010 documentary, "The Tustin Hangars: Titans of History".
The proposed concept for the regional park includes grass open space fields for informal recreational use, landscape berms along the park perimeter, public restrooms, shelters, trails, some formal recreational facilities and possibly a small lake. The hangar, standing 170’ tall 300’ wide and 1000’ long with an open floor area of 5.5 acres, might be well suitable for holding special events. The proposed concept also includes the potential preservation of five additional buildings including the iconic red and white-checked air traffic control tower and the former Marine base’s Crash and Rescue station.
TAIT's Senior Project Manager Todd Schmieder has worked closely with OC Parks to evaluate the existing site conditions, prepare technical studies for building reuse, develop several conceptual site plans and prepare a conceptual cost estimates for the proposed regional park that will be presented to the OC Parks Commission on January 5, 2012.
On December 12, 2011 the Orange County Register published a news article regarding a December 1st site visit conducted with the OC Parks’ Park Commissioners and a copy of the article at can be viewed at
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hangar-330821-county-park.html.