Santa Ana : Residents Sign Petitions in Effort to Block Arena

Residents living near MacArthur Boulevard and Main Street have begun collecting signatures to persuade the City Council not to approve a 20,500-seat arena in their neighborhood.

A council-appointed citizen’s committee recommended a 52-acre site last month as one of three locations most suitable for the $40-million arena.

Alan Durkovic, one of four Westdome partners, said it probably will be a couple more weeks before negotiations begin on one of the sites. The other sites are 25.4 acres at St. Gertrude Place and Grand Avenue and 18.2 acres at Main Street and Owens Drive.

“I don’t think there’s anything to comment on,” said Durkovic, stressing that no proposal has been made for the Main-MacArthur site, which is now agricultural land owned by the Sakioka family.

Richard Merritt, a resident of the Sandpointe neighborhood adjacent to the property, said that he and others in the area believe an arena would bring traffic into their neighborhood and “undesirable elements” who would park and leave trash on their streets.

“I think they’re going to be parking in our neighborhood rather than pay the $3 or $5 it will cost on the site,” he said, adding that people going to the Red Onion nightclub southeast of the intersection already park in the neighborhood.

Residents have collected about 400 signatures walking door to door a week ago, he said, and hope to have about 1,000 names before taking copies of the petitions to the City Council.

Merritt said he isn’t anti-development, noting that his neighborhood is surrounded by major office and commercial structures, but he contended that the arena should be surrounded by industrial zones.

Westdome was originally proposed for Flower Street and Civic Center Drive in downtown Santa Ana, but residents there balked at the proposal.

The City Council voted in January to reject those plans and appointed a 20-member committee to select a better location for the arena, in which the developers hope to house Orange County’s first National Basketball Assn. team, as well as conventions, concerts, indoor soccer and other events.

The committee studied 13 sites, with the MacArthur-Main property easily winning the top rating, followed by Grand-St. Gertrude and then Main-Owens. On April 3, the committee turned the project back to the Westdome developers so they could work out a deal on one of the sites.