New Jail Will Be Located Near Anaheim Stadium

Rejecting strong objections from political and business leaders of Anaheim, the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday selected a site half a mile from Anaheim Stadium for a $138-million, maximum-security jail to hold up to 1,500 inmates.

The board voted 4 to 1 to build the new jail on vacant, county-owned land at Katella Avenue and Douglass Road, across the Orange Freeway from the stadium that is home to the California Angels and Los Angeles Rams.

Ralph B. Clark, the supervisor whose district includes Anaheim, cast the only vote against the site.

A representative of Disneyland, which is closer to one of four other jail sites that had been considered by the board, nonetheless joined spokesmen for the Rams and Angels in urging the supervisors to keep the jail out of Anaheim.

But Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who led a weeklong battle to keep the jail out of Santa Ana in his district, said that a county report on possible locations “leaves no doubt in the mind of anyone who is socially conscious, leaves no doubt in the mind of anyone who puts human values above material values,” that the Katella-Douglass location is the best.

The four other potential sites, three in Santa Ana, are near larger populations with more schools built or planned, a county report said.

Before the Katella-Douglass location is formally chosen, environmental impact reports must be prepared and public hearings held, a process likely to last until the end of the year.

The selection of the new jail site took place in a meeting room filled to capacity with politicians, business people and residents, some of whom held hand-lettered cardboard signs and booed or applauded speakers.

“I’m pleading with you to proceed with caution on the jail site,” Anaheim Mayor Donald Roth told the supervisors. Earlier, Roth had noted that “Disneyland is known as the hub of happiness; let’s not change it to the hub of despair.”

The chosen site is in the Anaheim Stadium Business Center, which is being converted from vacant and low-rise industrial buildings to high-rise, commercial office complexes. City officials said they fear a jail will drive away developers in both that area and in adjoining Orange. During an emergency council meeting Monday, Phillip Quarre, president of Hartmann Corp., said he would withdraw his plans to build an office complex on Katella Avenue and State College Boulevard if a jail is built in the area.

The supervisors have been under pressure to provide more jail space since March, 1985, when they and Sheriff Brad Gates were found in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray for not heeding his 1978 order to improve conditions at the main men’s jail in downtown Santa Ana.

Gray fined the county, appointed a special master to oversee improvements at the jail, and ordered that the jail’s population be reduced from 2,000 to 1,500 by Jan. 15 and 1,400 by this April.

The county expanded branch jails in the City of Orange and near El Toro, turned away state and federal prisoners and authorized the early release of some inmates in an effort to pare the numbers at the Santa Ana jail.

The county also is looking for a site for a jail to hold 5,000 prisoners to be built in a remote part of the county. That search is expected to continue for at least another year; construction would take at least three years.

Plans for the larger jail are not expected to be affected by Tuesday’s decision. The 1,500-capacity jail is expected to be built relatively quickly because it would be smaller and be built on land already owned by the county.

The move to build a smaller second jail gained impetus on March 4 when Judge Gray ordered Gates to return to court this Thursday to show why he should not again be found in contempt for permitting population at the main jail to exceed 1,500 inmates three times in February.

The supervisors said they had to show Gray that they were taking action. The jail is expected to open in January, 1989.

Clark said at the opening of the 90-minute debate Tuesday: “There’s no doubt that we are going to be faced by lawsuits” by opponents of the jail site. “We are going to have all sorts of opposition to this.”

“Based on the outcry, and I mean outcry, from the affected communities . . . I believe we’ve got the proverbial tiger by the tail,” said Clark, who is stepping down as supervisor at the end of the year after 16 years in office.

But Clark failed to win any support for his proposal Tuesday that the board build one large jail in a remote location.

If the board had picked a different site, “the same crowd, different faces, are going to be here” in opposition, Supervisor Bruce Nestande said.

Clark’s efforts to keep the jail out of Anaheim were supported by John Shaw, vice president of the Rams, and A.E. (Red) Patterson, spokesman for the Angels.

Patterson said the county report of possible sites should have considered not just nearby residents but tourists.

“We’ve had jailbreaks at Chino, we’ve had jailbreaks in Santa Ana, we’ve even had them in Fullerton,” Patterson said, adding: “I can see 60,000 or 70,000 people (in the stadium) and a jailbreak occurs. Any announcement over the public address system” of an escaped felon “will start a panic” and hurt attendance at subsequent games.”

Stanton retorted: “It’s very unlikely that an escaped felon is going to run over and throw himself into a crowd of 30,000 screaming fans.” Besides, New York’s Yankee Stadium has good attendance and it’s located in the Bronx, which “is essentially a jail without walls,” he added.

Shaw agreed with Patterson that the county’s figures “were quite misleading on density” because they didn’t include visitors to the stadium and Disneyland.

But Stanton said he “took offense at large corporate units standing up here” and arguing against the county’s figures.

“We have to make a decision today or we buy a ticket, and it’s not to Rams stadium,” Stanton said, indicating that the ticket would be to jail for contempt of court.

Others complained at the meeting that the board was acting too quickly on a problem it has dealt with too slowly in the past.