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Officials Say Clippers’ Plans Won’t Set Back Arena Projects

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Times Staff Writer

Competing plans to build indoor arenas in Anaheim and Santa Ana will not be affected by this week’s announcement that the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team probably will not be moving to Orange County, officials involved with the projects said Thursday.

Neither city was counting on a lease with the Clippers as a condition of building an arena, the officials said.

“This really doesn’t represent any kind of setback,” Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young said.

Added Jim Ruth, assistant city manager in Anaheim: “It was never our intention to bring the Clippers to Anaheim.”

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The Clippers were seen as Orange County’s best chance to acquire a professional sports franchise, since both the NBA and the NHL do not plan to expand in the next few years. Clippers owner Donald Sterling occasionally had expressed interest in moving his team out of Los Angeles. But on Wednesday, Sterling welcomed an offer from private developers to replace the Clippers’ current home, the Los Angeles Sports Arena, with a new $100-million facility in exchange for a 30-year lease with the basketball team.

Feasibility Questioned

The Los Angeles facility would be built by two of the three companies that are financing the proposed Santa Ana arena--MCA Inc. and Spectacor Management Group--prompting speculation about whether the companies would be prepared to pour nearly $200 million into building similar arenas only 30 miles apart.

“It doesn’t sound very feasible,” said Neal Papiano, the lawyer for the development group that is financing the competing plan for an $85-million arena northeast of Anaheim Stadium, “but I guess stranger things have happened.”

Tony Guanci of King-Guanci Development Co., the developer for the Santa Ana arena, planned for Edinger Avenue and Lyon Street, said the proposed Los Angeles arena will not jeopardize financing for the 20,000-seat facility in Santa Ana.

“We do understand that an NBA or NHL team is important, but there are other ways to be successful,” Guanci said. “It was never the intention of the partnership to lure the Clippers. We will be out there doing our best to entice an NHL or NBA team to our area.”

However, there is some financial risk involved in building an arena without a commitment from a professional sports franchise.

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“I don’t think that’s economically sound,” said former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who now operates the Ueberroth Corp. in Newport Beach. “In my own opinion, it’s always the franchise first.”

The trouble is, NBA and NHL spokesmen say new franchises will be scarce in the next few years.

“We have absolutely no plans right now to expand,” said NBA spokesman Brian McIntyre. The league added two teams last year in Miami and Charlotte, S.C., and will add two more next year in Minnesota and Orlando, Fla., he said.

Asked about the possibility of luring an existing NBA franchise from another city, McIntyre said, “There are no teams that have any plans to move right now.”

McIntyre declined to speculate about whether the NBA would even permit a third team in the Los Angeles-area market, a decision that would be unprecedented in the league.

At the NHL, spokesman Gerry Helper said, “Any talk of expansion by our league is premature at this time.” The last time the NHL expanded was in 1979, when four teams from the World Hockey Assn. were added to the league, he said.

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Even if one or both arenas are built without a commitment from a professional sports franchise, Orange County is likely to acquire another team in the not-too-distant future because of the area’s market potential, several industry observers said.

“I’ll be very surprised if there isn’t over the next five years more than one major sports stadium built in Orange County,” Ueberroth said.

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