The Irvine City Council once again plans to discuss building a burial site at the Great Park.
But this proposal to be discussed at Tuesday’s council meeting, Jan. 13, is different from those in the past, Councilmember James Mai said.
“It’s a compromise.”
More than a decade ago, the city incorporated a proposal for a veterans cemetery in master plans for the development of the Great Park. But the idea of a burial place for those who served the country never found its place in concrete. An official veterans cemetery is now planned in Gypsum Canyon in Anaheim Hills.
What Mai hopes his council colleagues will agree on this week to still honor that desire for something in Irvine is a city-run columbarium for burial urns with the location in the Great Park, which is the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, contingent on public feedback.
The columbarium would serve Irvine residents, but give priority to veterans. That’s a caveat Mai said he hopes to make clear. He said he’s seen confusion about what a burial place in the Great Park entails.
He explained that veterans would not be able to use their benefits, and the proposed columbarium would not be VA-approved.
“If you want to do that, go to Gypsum, but if you really want to be buried in Irvine on the base, then this is an opportunity for you to do so,” he said. “But I do think we need to be fully transparent with residents.”
Mayor Larry Agran has long tried to garner support for what he envisions as a 20- to 30-acre cemetery at the northern edge of the Great Park — still part of the former base — on property that is commonly referred to as the ARDA site.
But after years of debate and changing locations in Irvine, its councilmembers and other elected officials from around the county endorsed Gypsum Canyon in 2021 as the place where a state-backed veterans cemetery should go.
That project, which has nearly $65 million pledged to it from county, state and federal funds, has yet to break ground.
And last month, the idea for a burial place at the Great Park raised by Agran once again received lukewarm support from his colleagues and from residents who addressed the dais.
“There are so many stakeholders in this particular topic here. There are older residents, newer residents, builders, veterans … I tried to find a balance between that and satisfy the needs of everyone,” Mai said. “That’s why this is being brought up.”
Mai envisions the site being “basically like a wall,” instead of a traditional burial cemetery.
“We just don’t want to make it a huge thing, but we still want to deliver on what the city promised,” Mai said. “It could be a beautiful, almost a memorial type of thing.”
And he hopes for the columbarium to be at the former El Toro base, but away from residential communities; there have been concerns from residents, Mai said, about having a burial site near their homes. The previously-proposed ARDA site is bordered by neighborhoods.
Funding is also unclear, but “what I envision is we create something like “Friends of the Library“ — a city-run program where volunteers do the upkeep for Irvine’s independent library system, Mai said.
Councilmember Kathleen Treseder, who was hesitant to support past proposals for a cemetery at the Great Park for concerns over location and finances, said she hopes the proposal by Mai is a “happy medium,” for her colleagues and the city’s residents.
“A columbarium is more compact, I think more accessible. And we could fund it with private donations, whereas a veterans cemetery, we would have needed money from the state, and that is simply not coming now,” she said.
If councilmembers agree this week, city staff would be directed to explore sites and plan for a municipal columbarium at the Great Park.