If you have followed the fight over the old airport site for the last year, you probably assumed the big question left to settle was housing. Would a slice of that land, once the runways go quiet, hold apartments for the servers, teachers and hotel staff who commute in from Canoga Park and beyond? That fight just ended, without a single vote cast. And before anyone had time to notice, a new one started, this time over a stadium that could seat 20,000 people.
If you walk your dog at Airport Park's fenced yard, sign your kid up for AYSO practice on the turf field, or just pass the site on your regular loop, the land's future is worth understanding on its own terms, not as a real estate story but as a neighborhood one.
What 2014 Voters Actually Locked In
Start with what's settled. In 2014, Santa Monica voters approved Measure LC by a margin above 60 percent. It bars new development on the airport land once aviation ends, unless voters separately approve different uses. Parks, open space and public recreation are allowed without another vote. Anything else, in theory, needs one.
The closure date itself came out of a 2017 consent decree with the FAA, which lets the city shut the airport down after December 31, 2028. Until then, the field keeps operating.
The Eight Districts the City Has Already Drawn
While the political fights played out, the city's planning team, led by the design firm Sasaki, spent nearly two years building something more concrete: a Framework Diagram for what comes after. It's the product of 87 public meetings, 20 small group sessions with more than 370 participants, and over 12,100 survey responses, and it divides the 227-acre site into eight districts.
Moving west to east, the plan calls for:
- Immersive Nature, a native habitat zone with wetlands, meadow and bird watching areas
- The Meadow, a smaller gathering space with adventure play and an outdoor classroom
- The Lawn, described as the park's shared living room, built for events and movie nights
- The Heart, a civic core with a recreation center and possible food hall
- Active Sports, the district built for organized athletics and large-scale recreation
- Arts & Culture, organized around food, performance and creative programming
- Urban Edge, which reuses existing structures along the north side facing the business park on Ocean Park Boulevard
- The Stroll, the green entry point from the Clover Park side
That framework moved into what planners call Phase 4 this summer, the stage where cost estimates and phasing actually start getting worked out. Nothing here has been built. But it's the closest thing to an official answer the city has produced, and it's the plan every other proposal now has to argue against.
The Fight That Just Quietly Ended
For most of 2026, the loudest argument wasn't about stadiums. It was about apartments.
A group called Cloverfield Commons, backed by Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights and the hospitality union Unite Here Local 11, pushed a ballot measure that would have set aside a quarter of the airport land for roughly 3,000 units of income-restricted housing, split between renters earning up to 80 percent of the city's median income and workers earning up to 120 percent. The remaining three-quarters would still become park.
The pitch leaned on a real number: about 90 percent of people who work in Santa Monica don't live there, and more than 70,000 commuters drive in every day. Supporters argued the airport closure was the rare moment to do something about that math on land the city already owns.
Park advocates, including Frank Gruber of the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition, opposed carving out any portion of the site for another use, housing included. To qualify for the November 2026 ballot, Cloverfield Commons needed 7,038 valid signatures by mid-June. They didn't get there. A second attempt to qualify for the 2028 ballot also missed its deadline, according to reporting from LAist in August. The group now says it plans to lobby the City Council directly to include housing in the redevelopment plan, rather than trying the ballot process again.
For anyone who spent the spring wondering whether their neighborhood was about to get a housing initiative on its doorstep, that particular version of the question is off the table for now.
Then a Soccer Club Walked In With a Different Pitch
The airport isn't even closed yet, and a new proposal already has residents talking. Earlier this month, a representative from Santa Monica FC laid out a plan at a Founder's Meeting for a 20,000-attendee stadium on the airport site once the field shuts down at the end of 2028. Mayor Caroline Torosis was in the room. She didn't endorse the idea on the spot, and she didn't shut it down either.
What makes this different from the housing fight isn't the size of the ask. It's the path. Cloverfield Commons ran a formal, public signature campaign that anyone could track and that ultimately failed under its own rules. The stadium pitch arrived informally, at a private meeting, with no environmental review and no ballot filing behind it. Measure LC still says any use requiring a vote needs to go through the ballot process the way Cloverfield Commons tried and failed to. A private pitch delivered in front of the mayor is not that.
Here's how the three visions for the site actually compare as of this month:
| Vision | Current status | What it would take to advance |
|---|---|---|
| City's Framework Diagram (8 districts) | In Phase 4, cost and phasing work underway | Council approval of a final Framework Plan, expected to build on the current draft |
| Cloverfield Commons housing measure | Signature drives failed twice; group now lobbying Council instead | Either a future qualifying ballot measure or a Council-approved policy change |
| SMFC stadium pitch | Informal proposal, no filing or review yet | Environmental review at minimum, likely a ballot measure under Measure LC |
What This Actually Means If You Use the Park Today
None of this changes anything about Airport Park as it exists right now. The four-acre park at 3201 Airport Avenue, with its fenced dog runs for large and small dogs and its synthetic turf field used by AYSO Region 20 for practices, keeps operating under the same rules it always has. The airport itself keeps flying small planes and jets until the last day of 2028, per the FAA agreement.
What's worth watching, if this land matters to your weekly routine, is the next round of public review. The Framework Plan due out of Phase 4 will be the first version with real cost estimates attached, and that's typically when proposals that sounded appealing on a slide start running into budget reality. City Council will also have to weigh in on how firmly it wants to defend the plan against pitches like SMFC's, especially since council members haven't ruled the idea in or out.
The bigger point is one that's easy to miss if you only skim headlines about "the Great Park." The framework everyone reviewed and commented on for two years is not the same as a done deal. It's a strong draft that both a soccer club and a stalled housing coalition are still trying to bend to their own use, from opposite directions, using very different playbooks. One of those pushes just proved that the formal route through the ballot box is genuinely hard. The other is testing whether it can skip that route entirely.
For a piece of land this size on the Westside, that tension probably isn't going away before 2028 arrives. If you're the kind of resident who walks that stretch of Airport Avenue often enough to have an opinion about what belongs there, the next Framework Plan update, whenever the city schedules it, is worth more of your attention than the last one got.
Johannes Steinbeck keeps close watch on how projects like this reshape the neighborhoods around them, from the Westside to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. If you're curious how a shift in a nearby landmark might affect your own property's story, or you're simply weighing your next move in Santa Monica, Steinbeck Homes is a good place to start that conversation. Request a home valuation whenever you're ready to see where your home stands today.
