Developer Plans to Buy Race Track

A Newport Beach-based development company has indicated its intention to buy for $100 million in cash the Los Alamitos Race Track and an adjacent 160-acre parcel of land.

If the deal is completed, Hollywood Park Realty Enterprises, the track’s present owner, would continue to operate it until 2001 under a lease-back agreement, according to Hollywood Park officials. Hollywood Park bought the property in 1984 for $63 million. Some Cypress residents have trying in recent years to thwart plans by Hollywood Park to sell the property for commercial development.

The proposed sale to SDC Development Ltd. is contingent upon several factors, said the officials, including the resolution of development and zoning issues with the city of Cypress.

SDC Development was reported to have agreed to honor Hollywood Park’s pact with Cypress to provide more than $11 million in improvements to the race track and reduce traffic congestion, but its officials could not be reached to discuss their plans for the remaining acreage.

Speculates on Development

John Kanel, a Cypress city councilman, said it would seem logical that a buyer would want to develop a portion of the 160 acres, which includes a 105-acre golf course.

If that is the case, he said, “the developer will have to come to the city and discuss its plans and probably go through the whole planning process.”

At one point last spring, Hollywood Park was considering four separate offers that would have sold the race track and the nearby land, a total of 297 acres. Two of those plans involved eventual demolition of the race track. It was not known if SDC Development had made one of the four offers.

Earlier, the Cypress City Council rezoned the 160 acres from public and semipublic use to an industrial park, a move that allowed commercial and industrial development, but it quickly rescinded the vote after an outcry from citizens.

Last summer, to make such rezoning more difficult, a coalition of Cypress residents, golfers and preservationists waged a petition campaign that led to voter approval of Measure D in November.

The measure, approved 54% to 46% by Cypress voters, requires that any proposal to rezone public-and-semipublic-use property must be put to the voters.

In March, however, according to Kanel, a judge ruling on a lawsuit against Measure D brought by Hollywood Realty voided a portion of the measure that referred to the 160 acres.

“In rescinding our (the City Council’s) action rezoning the land,” said Kanel, “we failed to change an amendment in the city’s general plan. The judge said we had to bring the current zoning into compliance with our general plan.”

Asked if a new owner of the property could develop it in light of the judge’s ruling, Kanel said:

“Hollywood Park in some sense did receive a favorable ruling from the court, so we’ve been directed to give them that zoning.”

Kanel conceded, however, that the city probably could comply with the court order by re-amending the general plan.