In July 2018, the Irvine City Council moved to study a third site for the veterans' cemetery, dubbed the "golf course site". Irvine residents initiated a petition initiative, led by Ed Pope and Larry Agran, to designate by zoning the ARDA site to be the only site in the Great Park area to be used for cemetery purposes. Proponents of the initiative to build at the original ARDA site submitted a reported 19,758 signatures to put the initiative on the November 2020 ballot. In May 2020, Irvine City Council voted 4-1 to adopt the initiative as ordinance, designating the ARDA site as the only site in the Great Park area for cemetery uses.