Another proposal for a veterans’ burial option at the Great Park was rejected this week by a divided Irvine City Council.

Instead of a full-scale veterans cemetery in the Great Park, which for years had been discussed but failed to actualize, Councilmember James Mai was hoping that his colleagues would be interested in a city-run columbarium for burial urns, and the location could even be considered elsewhere within the city based on public feedback.

The goal was to “find a balanced, workable, option that honors longstanding community desires while addressing resident concerns,” Mai said.

If approved by the council, city staff would have been directed to return in a couple of months with proposed site options, design plans and funding strategies that would not draw upon city finances. And the columbarium would have been open to all Irvine residents, with priority given to veterans.

But Mai’s colleagues on the dais were split on whether to support the proposal and, after about two hours of back and forth, the council narrowly voted 4-3 to “table indefinitely” the idea. Councilmembers Mai, Kathleen Treseder and William Go supported at least hearing what the staff came up with.

“I guess I am a little bit surprised,” Treseder said.

“I thought folks would be very excited to get initial steps done on a columbarium to fulfill what we would like to give to our veterans,” she said. “But it sounds like maybe that is not universally accepted if not at the ARDA site.”

A long-running debate

The ARDA site, as the property at the northern edge of the Great Park is commonly referred to, is where Mayor Larry Agran has long pushed for a veterans cemetery — a part of the former El Toro base Agran has said is a fitting resting place for those who served.

But there has been past community opposition to that location and after years of proposals for a veterans cemetery in Irvine bouncing between locations, Irvine councilmembers and other elected officials from around the county endorsed Gypsum Canyon in 2021 as the place where a state-backed project should go.

As planning for the cemetery progresses in Anaheim Hills, there has been less interest in the Great Park.

And just last month, city councilmembers voted to exclude any mention of a veterans cemetery in the remaining development of the Great Park, arguing plans have changed too much to make a cemetery a possibility.

Mai’s columbarium proposal explicitly excluded the ARDA site from consideration.

“What you have proposed, excluding the ARDA site from consideration, is, in fact, directly contrary to existing zoning law in the city,” Agran said during Tuesday’s meeting.

Agran was referring to a 2020 “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery Initiative” he circulated in town that was signed by nearly 20,000 Irvine residents and adopted by the City Council. That initiative established the ARDA site, which was rezoned for cemetery uses, caretakers’ quarters, an information center and parks.

But support for the ARDA site has fizzled out over the years; neighboring residents have expressed concern about having a burial site near their homes.

City Attorney Jeffrey Melching told Agran at Tuesday’s meeting that the city is not bound by the initiative and zoning to build a cemetery there. The zoning creates the opportunity, not the requirement.

But the legality of building anything other than a cemetery on the ARDA site continues to divide the council.

“I think it’s only fair to bring in an outside expert to decide what are the legal challenges that we are going to face in order to move this site,” Councilmember Betty Martinez Franco said.

Franco added that she couldn’t back the columbarium proposal as she didn’t have enough time before the meeting to speak to her constituents about the prospect.

And Councilmember Melinda Liu said she could not support the proposal for budgetary and clarity concerns.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but we’re talking about honoring veterans, making a preference for veterans, while at the same time, it is not for veterans,” she said.

“Of course, I was a little disappointed,” Mai said after his proposal fell short with the council. “And I guess some people didn’t understand it.”

“The purpose of it was to have staff conduct a study to explore options. It’s not all or nothing,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate that even a compromise wasn’t entertained.”