Sandpointe Residents Protest Westdome : Foes of Possible Site Say They Have 1,000 Signatures in Opposition

Residents living near a potential site in southeast Santa Ana for Westdome, a $40-million sports arena, said they have gathered about 1,000 signatures in opposition to the project.

During a meeting held at Taft Elementary School on Wednesday night, about 120 people voiced concerns about the project, which city officials and the four-person Westdome Partnership hope will attract a National Basketball Assn. team to Orange County.

Richard Merritt, who lives in the Sandpointe neighborhood next to the site at MacArthur Boulevard and Main Street, said residents are worried that traffic, noise and parking problems generated by the arena will spill over to their area.

Those same concerns, voiced by people living near Flower Street and Civic Center Drive, prompted the City Council to drop consideration of a downtown site for the arena last January.

Says No Deal Made

Westdome partner Alan Durkovic said Wednesday that residents are jumping the gun since only preliminary work has been done and that no deal has been made to purchase the site, currently farmland owned by the Sakioka family.

In fact, the proposed location is one of three possible sites recommended by a council-appointed committee that the partners are now studying. The others are at Main Street and Owens Drive and Grand Avenue and St. Gertrude Place.

Although there has been no contact between the developers and residents, Durkovic said he would be willing to discuss the issue.

“I would think at some point, if we choose that site, it would be useful to meet with them,” he said. “We’d want to find out what their objections are and talk about possible solutions.”

Circulating Petitions

Meanwhile, Merritt said he and other residents have been circulating petitions in the evenings and on weekends against the arena and have collected about 1,000 signatures. Those petitions may be submitted to the City Council on Monday, he said.

Councilman Dan Young, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, assured the residents that no site had been selected and that any decision would be preceded by an extensive environmental impact study and public hearings. In any case, he said, “it’s premature to react to a proposal that’s not even a proposal yet.”

Young added that he doesn’t believe the city and the developers are limited to one of the committee’s three recommendations and that there’s still time to find a suitable location, one that, he said, would be surrounded by industrial uses.

“I’m not sure that we’ve done a complete job of looking at all our industrial sites,” said Young, whose ward includes the MacArthur Boulevard-Main Street area.

Cement Plant Area

One of the seven locations considered by an Irvine firm that conducted an environmental study for the 20,500-seat arena in December was property occupied by a cement manufacturing plant at Harbor and MacArthur boulevards. Although that site is surrounded by industrial uses and the Santa Ana River to the west, developing the project there would be complicated by the difficulty of relocating the cement plant and the soft soil, the firm concluded.

Young said he believes that the developers may not be able to afford the site at MacArthur Boulevard and Main Street and that he had hoped to see a proposal already.

“We need to tell them, ‘Either get this thing on the table, or let’s move on,’ ” he said.