Why the Santa Monica Airport Should Become a Park

The Facility's Closure Provides a Great Opportunity to Give Los Angeles a Giant New Playground

A new 150-plus-acre park on the Westside of Los Angeles might seem like a pipe dream—at approximately $200 a square foot just for the land, that’s almost $1.3 billion. That doesn’t include the spectacular costs of buying out homeowners—assuming there was a government agency with the financial resources and huevos to use eminent domain to do it.

But Santa Monica could create such a park. It already has more than 150 acres of contiguous land under public ownership, with no homes on it, and only handful of existing structures. This …