Disney Park Plan Fuels Freeway Debate : Transportation: Long Beach’s bid for the theme park is both a wrinkle and a selling point in the decades-old 710 Freeway dispute.

The competition over a Walt Disney Co. theme park in either Long Beach or Anaheim has added a new twist in the decades-old controversy over the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway.

Supporters of the road project this week said they hope Long Beach officials, eager to attract the Disney park, will press for completion of the freeway’s northern end in the San Gabriel Valley. And opponents, who include residents near the proposed extension, said they are as determined as ever in their fight, regardless of the theme park.

Anaheim and Long Beach are vying for the Disney project, and the 710 Freeway could be one of Long Beach’s selling points in winning the park that could add 10,000 jobs and boost the local tax base. The freeway now runs from Long Beach to the edge of Alhambra. Completion of the freeway, closing its gap between the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways, would enhance access to a theme park in Long Beach.

“This could lead to a renewed effort to see the gap closed,” state transportation planner Jeffrey Bingham said of Long Beach’s interest in attracting the $1-billion theme park to a site near the Queen Mary.

“If Disney were to build (the theme park), the extension probably would help,” added Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell. “But I don’t think it will make or break the project.”

Long Beach officials traditionally have supported the freeway extension, even before the theme park issue arose. But Assistant City Manager John Shirey said the freeway project will not figure into the city’s campaign to attract the park.

Bingham and freeway supporters and opponents added that the theme park competition is minor in terms of the broader fight over whether the 6.2-mile freeway extension will ever be built.

Alhambra City Manager Kevin Murphy, who leads an almost daily battle lobbying for the extension, said: “It’s not an issue for Alhambra to worry about--whether the freeway is completed for a theme park. What is important is to get the traffic problems solved here.”

Largely because of the gap in the freeway system, Murphy said, traffic congestion increases daily on Alhambra’s surface streets.

Federal highway officials are reviewing documents for the project’s final environmental impact statement, which details the effects of the proposed route through eastern Los Angeles, South Pasadena and Pasadena.

“What’s going on in Washington with the environmental impact statement is far more important than the Disney theme park’s location,” Murphy said.

Bingham, chief of environmental planning for the state Department of Transportation in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, said a decision on the impact statement is expected within the next month. “They’re getting a lot of pressure to disapprove it,” Bingham said.

Both sides have heavily lobbied state and federal highway officials and have made trips to Sacramento, San Francisco and most recently to Washington.

Besides supporters in Long Beach city government, the freeway extension project also has backers among Port of Long Beach officials and leaders in the state’s trucking industry.

But South Pasadena Mayor Samuel G. Knowles, who opposes Caltrans’ proposed route, said: “I don’t feel this (theme park issue) is going to add any more pressure from Long Beach than they have already exerted.” He said other interests could make a stronger case for the extension. “I would think the trucking industry’s cargo needs would be greater than the traffic needs of the theme park.”

And he expressed concern that proponents of the extension want to send it through the middle of his city regardless of whether a theme park is ever built in Long Beach. “I’m just aware that everybody around us thinks the freeway should be completed through the heart of South Pasadena.”

Times Staff Writer Faye Fiore contributed to this story.