Ya know, John Wayne didn't start out as a major airport, serving 10 million passengers a year. It was general aviation. Quieter. So to be fair, maybe John Wayne should have remained general aviation. YA THINK?
>> ...maybe John Wayne should have remained general aviation.
Well, that's certainly an intriguing hypothetical. I see two central questions: "What alternate facility would have taken up the passenger load," and "Would opening or expanding a different facility have allowed SNA to remain GA forever, or only delayed an inevitable change?"
I'm not aware of many facilities that might have been seen as viable options, at the time. LAX was booming. There was pressure for more capacity more convenient to OC. The USMCAS in El Toro wasn't available to be converted to civilian use, nor were the military facilities in Tustin. I suppose Ontario might have been a consideration, but it's as out-of-the-way as LAX for most OC residents, if not more so, and I don't know whether it was already a commercial facility at that time or not. Arguably, looking at it now, shifting the focus to that facility might have been a miracle of foresight that would have allowed SNA to remain a GA facility while providing for the growing needs of communities in OC, Riverside AND SB all at the same time.
Had that been done, though, one must wonder how long it would have been before the growth began to tax the limits of the Ontario facilities bringing renewed pressure to open SNA to commercial traffic. Putting the focus on Ontario first might only have brought SNA to this same place by a different route as South County growth eventually forced the issue.
It isn't as if I think nobody had a right to complain about the airport, but maybe the City of Newport Beach and it's residents should have thought more about how growth would eventually impact the airport and determined to leave a bigger buffer around it; maybe setting aside some big parks or community open spaces with hiking and bike trails to the south. As it is, I think the residents who were over on the airport side of the hills at the time SNA opened to commercial traffic DID have a legitimate beef -- I lived next to the GA facility in Concord and the biggest things in there regularly were a handful of twin turbo-prop commuter craft and small private business jets so, yeah, I could see how I'd feel about the advent of dozens of 727's. I'd have probably been at City Council meetings opposing the opening. If it happened anyway, though, I would have simply moved somewhere else. I can't feature living for years in bitterness over something like that.
The people that leave me shaking my head, and the "snot-nosed boys and girls" to which I originally referred, are the ones who moved in AFTER SNA went commercial and still complain.