Irvine Rewrites Its Pitch for Movie Studio at El Toro

Desperate for a Hollywood-style happy ending in its fight to block an airport at El Toro, Irvine officials are trying to lure Steven Spielberg’s movie studio to the closed Marine base.

Mayor Christina L. Shea mailed a letter two weeks ago to DreamWorks SKG expressing the city’s interest in attracting the studio, soon after DreamWorks announced it was pulling out of a deal to build a $250-million facility in the Playa Vista section of West Los Angeles. The plan faced heated opposition from environmentalists, who said it would destroy wetland areas, but Irvine officials said they would rather have a new movie studio than an international airport.

A similar letter sent to DreamWorks four years ago received no reply, and--so far--movie executives have not replied this time. An executive said Tuesday that he doesn’t think the company has even received Shea’s latest correspondence.

Had Shea’s letter arrived, executives would have learned nothing from it about the county’s plans to build an airport nearby. The letter also omits the fact that the city doesn’t currently own the base and has no authority to make planning decisions for the property, though city officials hope to change that.

Rather, Shea wrote that the offer made four years ago “still stands.” A 440-acre site on the base “is prime land,” she wrote, “and, without question, a DreamWorks SKG studio would be an excellent fit with the technology and multimedia industries emerging in and around the Orange County area.”

But locating so far away from the entertainment industry’s Los Angeles hub would prove too expensive for any major studio, according to Carl Muhlstein of Cushman Realty Corp. Trade union contracts allow companies to avoid paying transportation and lodging costs to workers if they are employed within a 30-mile-radius centered on La Cienega and Beverly boulevards, said Muhlstein, who specializes in finding commercial real estate for entertainment and new media companies.

“I don’t know why Irvine would waste their time,” he said.

The attempt to woo DreamWorks comes a year after Irvine tried unsuccessfully to lure an NFL team. City officials are scrambling to bring businesses to the area in the hopes of convincing the Department of the Navy, which still owns the base, that there are viable alternative plans for the land other than an airport.

But airport opponents are unlikely to find a movie hero in DreamWorks. The company has dropped all plans to build a studio, according to Andy Spahn, the studio’s head of corporate affairs.

“We’re not looking at any sites,” Spahn said, “either here in L.A. or in the region, presently.”