Irvine : Lion Country Safari Wins Water Park OK

Lion Country Safari has won the go-ahead to proceed with construction of a new water-theme park after the City Council overturned a city administrative decision that would have called for further study of the plan and approval by the Planning Commission.

In its unanimous vote, the five-member council Tuesday night rejected the Community Development Department’s argument that the $4.5-million water attraction--planned for the park’s entertainment area--would be sweeping enough to require a new conditional use permit.

Lion Country Safari closed its drive-through park last year and sold its animals to various zoos as part of an “economic” decision, said Harry Shuster, Lion Country president.

Bill Draney, secretary treasurer for American Sports World Inc., one of the partner firms in the 12-acre park, said after the vote that if the council had sided with city planners, the project would have been abandoned and backers would have lost about $250,000.

“We were really down in the mouth and we were getting ready to write the whole project off,” he said. “If they had denied our request, we could have sought judicial relief, but we didn’t think we’d get much that way, so we were ready to call it off.”

Construction of the water rides and pools for the park is expected to begin by mid-October. Lion Country owners hope to open a section of the park called the Splash by May, said Dick Zanelli, president of Beach-West Properties Inc., another general partner in the venture.

Before the vote, Thomas Malcolm, an attorney for American Sports World, argued that use permits granted in 1968 and 1973 allowed the additions after undergoing simple design review.

“A scaled-down water park certainly is in keeping with the conditional use permits for the entertainment area,” he said. “We are merely trying to be consistent with the mandates we received then.”

Pat Hayley, management analyst for the Community Development Department, said the review process, which would have taken about “two months,” would have allowed city planners to address possible problems with the proposal, including proximity to crash zones for jets based at the El Toro Marine base.

However, the council sided with park owners after being told that visitors would not be concentrated in any one place, but would be spread throughout the 48-acre entertainment area, decreasing the risk of catastrophe should a military aircraft crash on the site.