"An important vote of confidence." That's how Neil Carrey, president of the Santa Monica Airport2Park Foundation, described a $499,149 county planning grant back in March. Three months later a $10 million state grant landed on top of it, and the money stopped being the most interesting part of the story. The interesting part happened quietly, with no ballot box involved: a campaign to carve 25 percent of the airport land into housing ran out of time to collect signatures in mid-June, and the group behind it is now aiming to hit a fresh deadline this Wednesday, August 12, for a different election two years away. That single fact tells you something the eight-district site map does not. The 2014 vote that supposedly settled the airport's future never finished the argument. It just decided who gets to keep having it, and when.
If you live anywhere near Airport Avenue, Bergamot, or the stretch of Ocean Park Boulevard that runs along the old runway fence, you already know the headline version of this. The airport closes at the end of 2028. Something like 192 acres, close to 3.5 percent of the city's entire land area according to the city's own project page, becomes the largest new park Santa Monica has built in a century. That part has been true since 2014, when more than 60 percent of voters approved Measure LC, the charter amendment restricting any post-closure use of the land to parks and open space unless a future ballot measure says otherwise.
"Settled" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence, though. Measure LC left a door open, and this year two different campaigns tried to walk through it from opposite directions. Understanding what actually happened this summer, not the abstract version, matters if you want to know what's coming to the land next door.
The Vote That Almost Reopened Everything
In January, three proponents, including Housing Authority board member Hajar Muqtasid, UNITE HERE Local 11 member Christina Navarro, and Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights housing committee member Ralph Mechur, filed what they called the Great Park and Community Housing Initiative. The measure would have kept 75 percent of the airport site as park, consistent with the spirit of Measure LC, while designating the remaining 25 percent for roughly 3,000 units of permanently affordable housing, income-capped so half the units would go to households at 80 percent of area median income or below.
To reach the November 2026 ballot, proponents needed 7,038 valid signatures by mid-June. They didn't get there. Organizers with UNITE HERE Local 11 said volunteers are continuing to collect signatures, this time aiming for enough by August 12 to qualify for a 2028 vote instead, according to reporting from LAist. The campaign didn't die. It just missed one election and is now running at the next one.
The fight has a specific address, too. In an April 22 letter to the city council, SMRR co-chairs Denny Zane and Mike Soloff argued that housing belonged specifically in the roughly 30-acre "Urban Edge" zone along the site's northern boundary, a strip currently devoted to aviation uses. Their reasoning was concrete: that zone already sits next to a 385-unit, eight-story market-rate housing project that Boston Properties has proposed for 28th Street and Ocean Park Boulevard, on land that used to be the Santa Monica Business Park. Below-market housing there, they argued, could act as a buffer between that new market-rate building and the rest of the park, with traffic routed out to Ocean Park Boulevard rather than pushed onto Walgrove Avenue and 23rd Street, according to reporting in the Santa Monica Daily Press.
Park advocates and the Airport2Park Foundation pushed back hard, arguing housing at the airport site may not even be legal under Measure LC without a separate vote, which is exactly the vote SMRR was trying to force.
Why This Particular Parcel Carries So Much Weight
None of this would generate the intensity it has if Santa Monica had other options. It doesn't, really. According to the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition's own reporting, the city currently has about 1.5 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, well under the five-acre standard commonly used as a baseline for cities. Hitting that baseline would mean more than tripling the city's current park acreage, and the coalition describes the airport land as the last large, contiguous public parcel in Santa Monica capable of doing it.
That's the part that gets lost when the story gets compressed into "airport becomes park." This isn't one project among several competing for city land. It's close to the only chance left, which is why a housing campaign, an aviation advocacy group, and a park coalition are all treating 192 acres like the last item on a very short shelf.
What The Draft Map Actually Shows
Setting the politics aside for a moment, the city did produce something concrete this year. In February 2026, planners released a Draft Framework Diagram organizing the site into eight districts, built from two years of outreach that included 87 public meetings and more than 12,100 online survey responses, according to Westside Current's coverage. The eight districts:
- Immersive Nature — native habitat and biodiversity, anchoring the site's western, quieter half
- Active Sports — organized athletic fields, part of what planners describe as the eastern side's "more active, regional character"
- Arts & Culture — creative programming with a food component
- Urban Edge — the contested 30-acre northern strip where the housing debate actually lives
- The Stroll, The Lawn, The Meadow, The Heart — connective and gathering spaces, named for how they'll feel rather than what they'll host
Planners also said the framework folds in Clover Park, the existing city park adjacent to the site, connecting it into the broader design rather than treating it as a separate piece. This is a diagram, not a finished plan. City materials point to a Phase 4 process, expected later in 2026, that will turn this framework into a fuller plan with actual phasing and cost estimates. In other words, the map exists. The bill for building it doesn't, at least not yet.
The Money Question The Ballot Result Didn't Answer
Two grants arrived this year that matter more for what they signal than what they cover. In March, the LA County Regional Park and Open Space District awarded Santa Monica $499,149 to design the first 20 acres of the future park. In June, the city landed a $10 million grant from California's Proposition 4 Climate Bond program, announced by state Senator Ben Allen, which Mayor Caroline Torosis called part of a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" for the city, per the Santa Monica Mirror's reporting.
Ten million dollars sounds substantial until you set it against the number aviation advocates raised at a May 12, 2026 city council meeting that drew an overflow crowd and more than 800 letters. Citing the city's own project estimates, they pointed out that full conversion could cost roughly $2 billion, a figure that looks different next to a city carrying about $94 million in reserves while running an annual deficit near $35 million, according to Santa Monica Daily Press coverage of that meeting. Aviation advocates, led by Spirit of Santa Monica chairman Ben Marcus, also argued the airport supports roughly 100 companies and 1,000 jobs, and one speaker described a donor heart flown into the airport that reached a child faster than ground transport could have managed. None of that changes the 2028 closure date, which the city reaffirmed again in September 2025 when it renewed its "unwavering commitment" to closing the airport, in the words of City Manager Oliver Chi, following a permit dispute over a lease with JSX Air, as reported by the Argonaut. It does mean the money to actually build what's on the map is still mostly theoretical.
What Actually Changes For You Between Now And 2028
For residents in Sunset Park, along the Ocean Park corridor, or anywhere within earshot of the runway, the practical answer this summer is: not much, yet. The airport keeps operating under its 2017 consent decree with the FAA through the end of 2028. The planning process moves into its next phase this year, and the city's engagement site still takes public comment on where the design goes from here.
What's worth tracking is which version of this story holds up. The park framework exists in detail now, down to which corner gets a lawn and which gets sports fields. The housing question got pushed two years down the road rather than resolved. And the funding gap between what's been granted so far and what full build-out might cost hasn't closed. Those three threads will keep moving independently between now and 2028, and the shape of the city's biggest new open space in a century depends on how they land.
Staying close to stories like this one, the ones that don't show up in a listing description but shape what it actually feels like to live somewhere, is part of how Team Stacy White approaches the Westside. If you're weighing a move to this part of Santa Monica, or anywhere else along the coast, and want a read on a neighborhood that goes beyond square footage, let's find your Westside home together.
