Final Approval of $85-Million Sports Arena Postponed by City Council : Anaheim: Development company affiliated with Rams requests delay to review environmental impact report. A decision may be made Dec. 27.

The City Council delayed final approval of an $85-million sports arena until Dec. 27 after a development company affiliated with the Rams asked for a postponement Friday.

Anaheim Stadium Associates, which is embroiled in an eight-year legal battle against the city over rights to the Anaheim Stadium parking lot, complained in a letter to the council that the company needed more time to review the 200-page environmental impact report on the arena project.

During a public hearing Friday, the council heard complaints that the arena will generate an unmanageable amount of traffic and noise. Among those who spoke were residents and owners of a mobile home park next door to the arena site, owners of area businesses and a lawyer from the Rams’ organization (apart from Anaheim Stadium Associates).

City Attorney Jack White said city officials would meet next with representatives of the Rams and the mobile home park. By the time the council takes up the arena approval again on Dec. 27, Mayor Fred Hunter said some of the disputes might be resolved.

“Everybody has concerns,” Hunter said. “This is a major project. Rather than do it wrong, we want to do it right the first time.”

The environmental impact report is the final document that the council must approve before construction can begin on the 20,000-seat arena northeast of Anaheim Stadium.

The delay means ground breaking for the project will be postponed several weeks until February, said Neil Papiano, a Los Angeles attorney representing the Ogden Corp., which is financing the project. A competing arena project in Santa Ana is not scheduled to break ground until June.

The city received 65 written responses to the arena environmental impact report, the majority of which were critical of the project. The Angels wrote a letter expressing concerns about parking and traffic problems, but were generally supportive of the arena.

The Rams, on the other hand, dispatched a lawyer to Friday’s public hearing to declare that the environmental impact report’s analysis of traffic and parking was inadequate.

“The adverse impacts of the project are too great,” said Andrew Starrels, a lawyer with Loeb and Loeb, the law firm of the Rams. “The Rams further reserve the right to challenge the adequacy of the EIR.”

Anaheim has agreed not to schedule events at the arena that will conflict with the 10 or 11 exhibition and regular-season games the Rams play at home each year.

Residents of the Orangetree Mobile Home Park on Douglass Road are worried about the city’s plans for easing noise and traffic around the park. The city has proposed surrounding the park with a 10-foot buffer wall and installing a security gate to prevent arena-goers from parking in Orangetree.

“My concern is being put into a prison,” said Priscilla Anderson, a park resident. “I don’t think you guys have got this thing together at all.”

The City Council will accept more public testimony when the environmental impact hearing continues at 9 a.m. Dec. 27. Written comments will be accepted at City Hall until Wednesday.