Ueberroth: Stadium Parking Lot Project Could Signal Move

Development of 68 acres of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot would “dramatically damage” the California Angels, Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth testified Friday. He said it would result in his recommendation that professional baseball move elsewhere.

“I would recommend as commissioner that someplace else be found in Anaheim, in Orange County, to build a stadium,” Ueberroth told a Santa Ana court.

As part of a deal to attract the Rams to Anaheim Stadium in 1978, the City of Anaheim signed contracts giving the football club the right to develop two portions of the parking lot covering 68 acres. The Angels claim that their lease with the city, made 14 years earlier, required that the city obtain the baseball club’s approval before allowing parking lot development.

The Angels have spent the last seven months in court trying to block the contracts.

Development of the 68 acres would “dramatically reduce the attendance” of Major League baseball in that stadium, Ueberroth said in Orange County Superior Court.

“It would dramatically reduce and dramatically damage the franchise of the California Angels,” Ueberroth testified.

“You might as well plow it under,” Ueberroth said of Anaheim Stadium.

Al Augustini lawyer for Anaheim Stadium Associates, a joint venture between the heirs of the late Rams’ owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, and a Boston-based development firm, objected seven times as a single key question was being put to Ueberroth.

Augustini interrupted so often that Judge Frank Domenichini ordered the court record to reflect the lawyer’s continuing objection to Ueberroth’s testimony.

The Angels have asked for a court order blocking the development, or $100,000,000 in damages if building takes place. Ueberroth, who was the final witness in the Angel’s seven-month case, was considered critical to the Angels’ hopes of showing that the damage the club will suffer is so severe that the development should be prohibited.

Even if the development is limited to the project that has progressed the furthest, a proposal for six high-rise buildings along Orangewood Avenue, the impact on baseball would be severe, Ueberroth testified.

Parking Spaces

That project would leave 12,000 parking spaces around the stadium--the minimum under the Angels’ lease with the city--but many would be in a high-rise structure, rather than at ground level.

“It (developing 20 acres along Orangewood) would have a substantial negative effect on attendance at the Angel games,” Ueberroth testified.

But not, he said, “to the degree that I would be recommending development of another stadium at another site,”

Augustini said that construction could already be under way along Orangewood had Autry not filed notices of the court dispute in property records. The Rams’ ownership has already signed a contract for development and received conditional city permits for building there.

Building is now planned only on the Orangewood parcel, not the State College Boulevard parcel, said Thomas Salinger, attorney for the city. Salinger said it was “unrealistic” to question Ueberroth about the effect on the Angels of building on both parcels.

In making his assessment of the effect of planned parking changes at the stadium, Ueberroth said Southern California baseball fans “are somewhat unique.”

Private Car’s Importance

“They are virtually totally dependent for sporting events on the private car,” Ueberroth said.