On a Saturday morning, a dog walker cuts through the off-leash yard at Airport Park while, a quarter mile east, a small crowd files into the Museum of Flying for the weekend exhibit. Neither one is waiting for 2028. Both are already standing on ground the city has folded into its plan for the Great Park, the 192-acre open space slated to replace Santa Monica Airport once the runway closes for good on December 31, 2028.
That closure date is fixed. What's less understood, even by people who drive past the airport fence every week, is how much of the city's new eight-district plan for that land is not a rendering of something that doesn't exist yet. Three of the eight districts in the framework the city released this year, Arts & Culture, Urban Edge, and The Stroll, are built around places and buildings already in use under their current names: Arts & Culture and The Stroll include places visitors can access now, while Urban Edge's commercial buildings remain in private use. The other five districts sit on active taxiways and runway pavement that nobody gets to walk on until the FAA lease runs out.
The Arts & Culture District Already Has Box Office Hours
The framework's Arts & Culture district is described in city planning materials as a corridor built around food, performance, and creative expression. It doesn't need to be built. It's already staffed. Barker Hangar hosts public events on the airport grounds today. The Museum of Flying sells admission tickets seven days a week. The Ruskin Group Theatre Arts Center runs a regular season of productions in a black box space steps from the flight line. Working artists already rent studio space through the Airport Arts Center.
The framework's own language acknowledges this directly, describing the district as building on cultural assets already present in this part of the site. What changes under the plan isn't the existence of these venues. It's how they connect to the rest of the park once the pavement around them stops being an active runway and starts being green space with paths running between the buildings.
Clover Park Is Already Doing the Job of "The Stroll"
The Stroll, the district framework materials describe as the park's front door, sits on the footprint of Clover Park, a public park that exists today at the edge of the airport site. The framework's language for this district calls for wide multi-use paths, a dog park, community gardens, and flexible lawn space. Most of that description matches what Clover Park already offers a family showing up this weekend with a soccer ball or a picnic blanket.
The name change from Clover Park to The Stroll signals an expansion, not an invention. The framework proposes widening the paths, adding gathering space, and stitching the park more visibly into the airport site as the fence line recedes. But the core activity, people walking and gathering on public grass at that spot, isn't a 2028 feature. It's a today feature with a 2028 upgrade attached.
Urban Edge Is the Buildings Already Collecting Rent
The Urban Edge district runs along the site's northern border, facing Ocean Park Boulevard, and the framework describes it as a connected district that extends the park into the surrounding neighborhood through adaptive reuse of existing structures. The building stock in question is not hypothetical. The city already leases commercial space in this part of the airport property to working businesses, and those leases are part of the revenue picture the Great Park Coalition has cited when discussing how the park might eventually pay for its own construction, an estimate that put existing building rents at $20 million to $22 million a year once airport-specific costs come off the books after 2028.
The framework's plan for Urban Edge adds pedestrian pathways, a possible youth and senior center, and small business incubator space to what's already there. It doesn't propose tearing down and starting over. It proposes opening up a stretch of the site that currently reads as a private business park to people walking or biking the boundary.
What Still Sits Behind the Fence
The remaining five districts, Immersive Nature, Active Sports, The Lawn, The Meadow, and The Heart, cover the mile-long stretch that used to be the runway itself, plus the open tarmac on either side. None of it is open to the public today in any form. It's active airport pavement, governed by a 2017 consent decree that requires Santa Monica to keep operating the facility through the end of 2028.
That's the honest gap in the story. The framework can describe wildflower meadows, a community farm, a splash pad, and an indoor sports venue for these districts in detail, because the design work has actually gotten that specific. But specificity on paper and access on the ground are different things, and for these five districts, access doesn't start until the airport stops operating.
| Framework district | Present-day counterpart | Open to the public now |
|---|---|---|
| Arts & Culture | Barker Hangar, Museum of Flying, Ruskin Group Theatre, Airport Arts Center | Yes |
| Urban Edge | Leased commercial buildings along Ocean Park Boulevard | No; it is a private business park |
| The Stroll | Clover Park | Yes |
| Immersive Nature | Western tarmac and taxiways | No |
| Active Sports | Eastern tarmac | No |
| The Lawn | Central runway footprint | No |
| The Meadow | Central runway footprint | No |
| The Heart | Central runway footprint | No |
The Clock That Actually Governs the Rest
The framework itself moved through a defined process this year. The city released the Draft Framework Diagram in early 2026, organizing the site into its eight districts after nearly two years of outreach that included more than 12,100 online survey responses and 87 public meetings. That draft built on five guiding principles the City Council adopted in January 2025:
- Start with Nature
- Inspire Wonder
- Balance Economics
- Amplify Versatility
- Celebrate Place
City planning materials describe the next stage, Phase 4, as the point where the Framework Diagram becomes a fuller Preferred Scenario Framework Plan, with cost estimates and phasing recommendations attached. The city's own timeline placed that work in summer 2026. A separate signal of momentum came in March 2026, when the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District awarded Santa Monica a $499,149 planning grant, specifically earmarked for the first 20 acres of the future park.
None of this changes the hard date. The airport closes December 31, 2028, under the terms the city won after suing the FAA and reaching a 2017 settlement. Until then, the five interior districts stay pavement, and the three edge districts keep doing what they're already doing, just under new names on a city diagram.
There is also a live wrinkle worth knowing about rather than ignoring. A separate ballot petition, circulating this year, has proposed redirecting roughly a quarter of the airport land toward housing instead of park use. Whether that measure qualifies for a ballot and what it would mean for the district boundaries described above remains an open question, not a settled fact, as of this writing.
What This Means for a Weekend This Fall
None of this requires waiting. A resident who wants a preview of what the Arts & Culture district will feel like can buy a ticket to a Ruskin Group Theatre production this month. Someone curious about The Stroll's expanded paths can already walk Clover Park's current loop. The Museum of Flying keeps its regular hours regardless of what phase the planning process is in.
The five interior districts are the part worth watching over the next two years, because that's where the framework's language, wetlands, a community farm, a mile-long former runway reimagined as a spine of public space, describes something genuinely new rather than a renaming of something already open. Phase 4's cost estimates and phasing recommendations, once published, will start to answer which of those five districts gets built first once the fence finally comes down.
Susan Stark Homes keeps a close eye on how projects like the Great Park reshape the daily rhythm of Santa Monica, because the clients we work with tend to be the ones who've walked Clover Park for a decade and want to understand exactly what's changing next door.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
