Anaheim’s choice: Build housing or please Disney
For decades, Anaheim and Disneyland have enjoyed a snug relationship as the city and the entertainment giant have jointly polished the neighborhood where Disney’s amusement parks have grown and flourished.
More than $6 billon in private and public money has been poured into the resort district, bringing a Disney-esque sheen to an area once overrun with cheap motels, tacky retail shops and bubbling neon signs.
The clutter on the edge of neatly groomed Disneyland was such an irritant to Walt Disney that when he went to Florida to expand his kingdom four decades ago, he bought 30,000 acres of swampland, in part to shield the future resort and its visitors from such an eyesore.
Now, a proposed housing project in the midst of Anaheim’s resort quarters has unearthed those ancient concerns, leaving city officials to debate which is more important: pleasing Anaheim’s largest employer and biggest tourist draw or creating needed housing.
The project, planned as 1,300 condominiums and 200 low-cost apartments, has been embraced by the City Council, which sees it as a partial solution to Anaheim’s housing shortage. But Disney officials are pushing back, fearful it could degrade the area they believe has finally become a Disney-worthy gateway to their amusement parks.
“It’s like owning a wonderful house in a wonderful neighborhood,” said Ed Chuchla, Disneyland’s vice president of corporate real estate. “You care about the house and what could impact it.”
Cynthia King, director of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Entertainment and Tourism, said the Walt Disney Co.’s reluctance to support the housing plan is just the latest example of the entertainment giant’s obsession with controlling its surroundings.
“They’re all for that housing if you put it behind a wall a few miles away,” King said. “But they feel this low-cost housing is a threat to their central function, to create this unrealistic, magical kind of place.”
Disney officials agree housing is a pressing issue in Anaheim but say it doesn’t belong outside the gates to Disneyland and California Adventure. That area, which has increasingly given way to hotels, restaurants and the tourist-friendly retail district Downtown Disney, has long been a source of frustration to the company.
In 1965, when Walt Disney was buying land in central Florida, he complained about how little control he had in shaping the area around Disneyland: “We don’t like it, but we get blamed for it,” he said, according to a Disney historian.
“The ‘it’ was the ticky-tacky stuff that grew up around Anaheim: the fast-food restaurants, the cheap hotels and the neon jungle,” said Richard E. Foglesong, a professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., who wrote a book about how Disney World shaped central Florida, “Married to the Mouse.”
“He had learned his lesson there and didn’t want to make the same mistakes again.”
Disney has not achieved that level of power in Anaheim, but the company’s relationship with city officials has been cozy.
Disney’s favored status with the city was illustrated in 1998, when Anaheim police and firefighters were kept waiting for more than an hour while Disney officials cleaned up the scene of a fatal accident involving a park visitor.
“Right or wrongly, everyone who has been on the City Council believes what’s good for Disney is good for Anaheim,” said Steve White, president of an Anaheim citizens group that once sold T-shirts reading “Anaheim: owned and operated by Disney.”
For all the criticism Anaheim gets for being too close to Disney, city officials said, it’s just good business to address the company’s concerns. Disney is the city’s largest business with 20,000 employees, and 40% of Anaheim’s general fund comes from tourism.
“It would certainly be wrong to avoid the largest employer and economic engine to our city,” said Mayor Curt Pringle. “But I don’t believe in any fashion Disney has any undue or aggressive influence in Anaheim.”
Rarely has Disney failed to get its way on setting the tone for the area outside the gates to Disneyland and California Adventure. The housing dispute is one of those occasions.
When Disneyland’s 18-month celebration of its 50th anniversary recently drew to a close, park officials turned their attention back to their neighborhood, specifically to a 25-acre parcel between California Adventure and the area where a third park may someday be erected.
When Disney officials learned that a developer was planning to put in housing -- including low-cost homes that park and hotel workers might use -- they lobbied hard against the project. They called City Council members an hour before the meeting, spoke out against the plan at the meeting and later met privately with council members.
Councilman Richard Chavez said he was “disturbed” that Disney thought a last-minute phone call could influence his decision.
Disney officials said their attempts to derail the project were caused by the developer, SunCal Cos., “circumventing” the city’s planning process, which includes environmental and traffic studies. The SunCal project, which would replace about 300 mobile homes, still has hurdles to clear before ground is broken.
Regardless, the issue has caused friction between Disney and Anaheim’s elected officials.
Disney officials downplayed the flap. “We have a great relationship with the city,” said Kristin Nolt Wingard, Disneyland’s senior vice president of public affairs. “Are we going to agree all the time? Of course not. We’re proud of what our partnership has accomplished over the years and how it has benefited Anaheim. One issue should not define an overall relationship.”
King, the Cal State Fullerton professor, said she thinks the two sides -- as they have before -- will find middle ground. “There’s going to be squabbles between Anaheim and Disney. But they really have no choice but to get along. They can’t get divorced.”
