Katella Plan Is Dead, Say 4 on Anaheim City Council

The $2.7-billion Katella Redevelopment Project, which has generated packed public hearings and angry opposition recently, is dead, four of Anaheim’s five City Council members said Tuesday.

Council members and other city officials conceded that public reaction against the project--which had already led to postponement of a council decision on the plan and re-evaluation of its scope--had killed the proposal.

The Anaheim Planning Commission voted unanimously Monday to recommend to the City Council that the project be scrapped, and the four council members reached Tuesday said they will follow the Planning Commission’s lead and vote to drop the project.

‘Whole Project Was Wrong’

The final decision could come at the council’s Tuesday meeting, officials said.

“The whole project was wrong, and it was not prepared correctly,” Councilman Fred Hunter said. “I will vote to abandon this project permanently, to put the nails in the coffin. This is a victory for the people.”

Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood said: “I will vote to follow the Planning Commission’s recommendation. It’s unfortunate there has been so much misinformation, but we would not be able to go ahead with this under the circumstances.”

Councilman William Ehrle said he had attended several public meetings at which residents expressed fear of the project and distrust of city officials.

‘Horror Stories’

“I heard horror stories from some of those people,” Ehrle said, “people so fearful of losing their homes that they could not sleep at night. I heard stories about heart attacks--there was a tremendous amount of feeling from the community.

“The communication has been so bad on what the intent of this project is that my opinion was let’s scrap it and start all over.”

Councilman Irv Pickler said he, too, will vote to end the project.

“I think it is something I would have done a long time ago,” Pickler said. “We didn’t sell this project. We didn’t do a good job of letting people know what this was all about. I have no problem with putting this plan aside and looking at the whole issue from a different perspective.”

Mayor Ben Bay, in London this week for a football game Sunday between the Los Angeles Rams and the Denver Broncos, could not be reached for comment.

The 4,500-acre redevelopment project could have affected more than 12,500 residences in an area bounded roughly by Santa Ana Street and Ball Road on the north, the city limits on the south, the Santa Ana River on the East and 9th Street on the west.

City officials said they are still puzzled over how public reaction to the project could have gone so wrong.

Several council members said they had received the Katella Project report--a foot-high document on its objectives and impact--just two or three days before the meeting at which they were scheduled to vote on the project.

At the same time, residents within the project area received registered letters from the city stating that some private property might be taken through eminent domain. The letters created a furor and attracted a packed house of more than 1,600 at the July 7 council meeting.

Residents at the hearing, already confused and angry, said they were further disenchanted when the meeting began with a staff report listing the proponents of the project: the Anaheim Hilton and Towers, Bank of America, the Wrather Corp., the Anaheim Marriott and the Visitor and Convention Bureau. The names prompted a chorus of boos.

“It was obvious that it was big bucks talking instead of real concern for our interests,” recalled Jerry Pritchard, a homeowner who attended the meeting.

“It had never eluded anybody that the city caters to Disneyland and the big hotels because they bring the money in. But it began to seem that that aspect overrode our objections.”

The City Council postponed a decision on the proposal, but residents hired lawyers and consultants and began lobbying.

In addition to their belief that redevelopment would mainly benefit big businesses, residents questioned the accuracy of describing their neighborhoods as blighted. By definition, redevelopment is supposed to be limited to blighted areas.

As homeowners’ fears mounted, city officials continued to insist that residents did not understand the project’s purpose: While providing money to clean up substandard housing that might legitimately be called blighted--such as some in the Jeffery-Lynne neighborhood west of Disneyland--the project would be a source of revenue to improve sewers, streets and freeways in the area, officials said.

Residents would be able to obtain low-interest loans to improve their property, the officials said, and a portion of the revenues would be used for schools in the area.

No residential neighborhoods would be torn down, they added, and very few people would be displaced.

“We needed to have the public more aware of what good it could do for them, and it just wasn’t done,” said Paul Bostwick, chairman of the Project Area Committee, a 16-member group established by the city to advise it on the redevelopment plan.

Bostwick’s group, made up of business owners, tenants and others from the project area, endorsed the plan after “having many of the same questions and concerns” as the neighborhood groups opposed to it, he said.

But residents were not appeased. They began rallying in parks and picketing at City Hall. A week ago, on the advice of Anaheim community development and planning director Norman J. Priest, the City Council voted to revise the project’s boundaries. The revision called for removing a substantial portion of residential neighborhoods from the project area.

Priest also announced 12 public meetings at which the Katella project would be explained to residents. By Monday, just four meetings had been held, but the overwhelming opposition that was voiced led Priest to recommend that the entire project be killed.

“We do not believe the (Redevelopment) Agency can effectively carry out a redevelopment plan which is so disturbing to so many residents,” Priest said in press release issued after the Planning Commission vote Monday. Priest has declined further comment.

Priest, who has taken much of the heat from angry homeowners, was also criticized by council members, who said the project’s presentation to the public was badly mishandled.

“I’m very upset with how this was handled,” Pickler said. “(Priest) is the head of redevelopment and planning, and I feel that the job that needed to be done was not done.”

But Pickler would not say whether Priest’s position is in jeopardy: “We’ve been so busy putting out the fires that we haven’t had a chance to analyze what went wrong. We have to hear both sides, but I am very upset with the way this was managed.”

Hunter said that he was also not satisfied with the way the project was handled and said that if homeowners had brought a lawsuit, the plan probably would not have stood up in court.

“I admitted at that (July 7) meeting that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to read the report on the project,” Hunter said. “What bothers me is that as a councilman I know little more than the homeowners do.”

But Kaywood defended Priest, calling him the “best redevelopment director in the state.” Kaywood also said residents may feel the loss of the redevelopment in the long run: “It will mean that when people come to the city to have their streets repaired, the money is not going to be there.”

And Disneyland Executive Vice President Jack Lindquist said dropping the redevelopment project might scare away some developers: “I’m not a land developer, but I don’t think it is going to make it any easier.”

Lindquist said Disneyland’s planned expansion on property around the park that it already owns would continue with or without redevelopment:

“We felt (redevelopment) was a viable vehicle in the commercial recreation area to prepare to move forward. Not having it is a loss, but I believe the private sector can accomplish what needs to be done. Contrary to popular belief, redevelopment was not our idea.”

The Katella Redevelopment Project, even in defeat, is likely to remain a topic of conversation and controversy.

“The sky-is-falling group carried the day,” Bostwick said. “There is a lot of fear, but if people had read their newspapers and their mail and had got more involved in the beginning, we might have avoided this.

“They knew nothing about the project other than they didn’t want it.”

Indicative of the continuing mistrust of City Hall was a comment by Pritchard, who said his neighborhood group would not stop picketing against the project until the City Council formally votes it down.

“And even then, people are going to pay a lot more attention from now on to what the city is doing,” he added.