ANAHEIM : 10-Foot Statues Stir Debate Over Theater

Gargantuan statues depicting a dragon, a knight and a gargoyle were key concerns in a City Council dispute Tuesday on whether to approve a Medieval-theme dinner theater in the city’s commercial recreation area.

The figures are in direct violation of design guidelines adopted last year by the city Planning Commission as the first move in a series of code changes designed to upgrade the look of the tourist area. The planning department calls the guidelines an attempt to rid the city of its cluttered Las Vegas image by prohibiting gaudy signs and eye-catching gimmicks.

In its first challenge to those guidelines, which merely are suggestions given to developers and not laws, the council voted 3-2 in favor of the statues. Dissenting council members said allowing exceptions to the guidelines on the first challenge set a poor precedent.

“We spent a lot of money studying the commercial recreation area and developing guidelines for it in response to the loud and clear request of our community to improve the look of the area,” said Councilman Tom Daly, who voted against the statues along with Councilman Irv Pickler.

Opinions about the larger-than-life rooftop statues ranged from “superfluous,” as Pickler called them, to Councilman William D. Ehlre’s praise of them as “Fantasyland in the purist sense.”

“I don’t have a problem putting the dragon, knight and gargoyle up,” said Mayor Fred Hunter, who voted for the project. “If we don’t like it--if there’s enough flak--down goes the gargoyle. The statues will come down.”

The statues, each about 10 feet tall, would sit atop the front of a castle-like building planned for Manchester Avenue just south of Katella Avenue.

“My concern is for the residents who have to live there every day,” Daly said. “Gargoyles and dragons and knights are not in the guidelines. There are tens of thousands of people who live in this area and they deserve quality planning and quality architecture.”

The 750-seat dinner theater, called King Henry’s Feast, is scheduled to open by the end of the year. It is planned for nearly 3 acres of dilapidated freeway property in a mostly commercial and industrial area of Anaheim.

The council approved the project on the condition that photographs of the statues be submitted for approval.