Tustin city feature
About this landmark
Seventeen-story hangars built in six months for military airship operations.
The two hangars were built in central Tustin: the North Hangar near Valencia Avenue and Armstrong Road, and the South Hangar near Warner Avenue and Tustin Ranch Road. Only the South Hangar survives. Built in 1942 on an accelerated wartime schedule and completed in October 1943, the structures are among the largest wooden buildings ever constructed, each rising seventeen stories high, over 1,000 feet long, and 300 feet wide. The design used only 33 tons of structural steel—a fraction of the 4,000 tons a conventional design would have required. The nearly all-wood construction, built from Oregon Douglas fir, made both hangars notable for their engineering and earned them recognition as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1993.
Construction and early operations
The hangars were built in just over six months at a cost of $10,062,482.08, designed by Arsham Amirikian, the Principal Engineer of the Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks. The structure was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The naval air station that housed them operated for decades before closing on July 3, 1999. Both hangars have appeared in television and film productions, including JAG, The X-Files, and Pearl Harbor, as well as in car commercials, adding to their cultural significance beyond their original military purpose.
The North Hangar housed the development of a cargo airship prototype under Pentagon and NASA contracts. In October 2013, a windstorm damaged the roof, collapsing part of the structure and damaging the aircraft inside. The facility remained in this damaged state until November 7, 2023, when a three-alarm fire broke out on the roof and almost completely destroyed the North Hangar. The remaining portions have been under demolition since December 2023.
The South Hangar today
Only the South Hangar still stands. It has been leased by the City of Tustin since 2002, and the city currently spends roughly $1.35 million each year on enhanced security to protect it from fire. The structure has been rented for filming—including "Austin Powers"—and commercials, generating approximately $1 million in revenue historically. However, the hangar's long-term future remains undecided. The U.S. Department of the Navy still owns both the structure and the underlying land. Remediation costs exceed $100 million, and the city plans community meetings to discuss the South Hangar's future.
Environmental assessments at the North Hangar site identified asbestos, arsenic, lead, and nickel contamination that required approval from state and federal agencies before debris removal could begin. Any repurposing or demolition of the South Hangar will require substantial funding because routine maintenance alone costs millions annually.
Insurance connection: Fire risk and historic structures
Homeowners policies typically cover dwellings and personal property through separate limits. Replacement cost coverage offers better recovery prospects than actual cash value, which factors in depreciation. Historic structures at high risk of loss benefit from careful coverage assessment. For historic properties or structures with substantial values, dwellings should be insured based on reconstruction cost, not market value, since the policy does not cover the land. Eligibility and limits depend on the individual policy. The issued policy controls.
Primary sources: City of Tustin, Wikipedia MCAS Tustin
Insurance context is general information only. The issued policy and its endorsements settle coverage.