One of the largest wood structures in the world will be torn down for a complex of houses, offices, and stores. (ACHP)

In suburban Los Angeles' Orange County, perhaps an enormous hangar for blimps just doesn't fit in.

A 1,000-foot-long, 170-foot-tall wood structure used to store blimps during World War II will be torn down for a housing development, the city of Tustin decided last month.

Hangar 29 was built from Douglas fir in 1942 on a former U.S. Marine Corps Air Station base, which closed in 1999. An identical hangar, also listed on the National Register of historic Places, was transferred to Orange County, which is considering converting it to a sports complex.

Tustin's city council voted unanimously on Feb. 22 to reject all four proposals for Hangar 29. The ideas, all which would reuse the building, included a motocross facility, a cooking school, a retail complex, and an aircraft-construction center.

"There were a lot of intensive steps" that the city took when it considered the four proposals, says Lisa Woolery, city spokeswoman. The staff did a background check and credit check on applicants, for example. All four proposals were insufficient, she says: Two included only six percent of the information the city requested. "Since they were so incomplete, there wasn't enough reliable information for the city to properly evaluate their ideas or how they were going to pay for it," Woolery says.

Both the Navy and the state historic preservation office reviewed the four proposals.

"We had no reason to disagree with their finding that they couldn't support the cost of it, the long-term economic viability," says Stephen Mikesell, deputy state historic preservation officer.

When the federal government transferred the hangars to the city and county, it stipulated that the city and county follow a process before developing the base.

"It's sort of like a federal easement on those properties," Mikesell says. "If [city officials] could demonstrate that they were not economically viable alternatives, that easement was lifted. It doesn't mean that they have to be torn down; it just means that the federal government is no longer involved, and it becomes a decision at the local level."

Under the city's agreement with the Navy, the building must be documented before it is razed, so on Feb. 22 the council also voted to spend $127,000 on a written history, video, and exhibit on the hangar. Because the Navy has to clean up the site before a demolition, Hangar 29 may exist for another five years.

The city will sell the land to Tustin Legacy Community Partners, the developer that is creating a 40-acre development of shops, offices, and 2,000 houses on the former military base. The city demolished the base's military housing in 2004.

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