Anaheim’s Building It, but Are They Coming?

I f you build it, they will come.”

Oh really?

That might have worked for Kevin Costner in Iowa, where the corn grows tall and runs even deeper, but what about planners of $70-million athletic arenas on the corner of Katella and Douglass?

Anaheim Arena is Orange County’s own take on the California Promise, where land is to be developed, pastel-tinted architecture is to be erected and money is always enough to buy happiness. This time, though, happiness comes on hardwood and ice, inside Reebok high-tops and CCM skates, under the initials NBA and NHL.

Thursday afternoon, an adviser to the Anaheim Arena project, Greg Smith, was entertaining another luncheon audience with beautiful artist’s renderings of arched doorways and triple-tiered concourses while detailing the many wondrous things Anaheim Arena one day will be able to do.

“What’s really unique,” Smith said, “is how the ice surface will be installed in the floor. To go from a hockey layout to basketball will take only a four-hour turnaround, which is almost unheard of right now. . . . Conceivably, we could have a Saturday afternoon hockey game, followed by a Saturday evening basketball game.”

That’s a nice perk, provided you already have two others.

A hockey team and a basketball team.

Anaheim Arena has neither, unless Cal State Fullerton is interested in seeing how 2,000 basketball fans might look against a backdrop of 18,000 seats. The city will begin considering construction bids May 16, with work scheduled to begin June 3 and end by August of 1993. So, the city has about 28 months to line up a tenant or two.

“We aren’t sure about if and when a basketball team or a hockey team will come into Anaheim,” Smith said, “but for the city of Anaheim and Ogden Corp. to go into such an agreement in the first place, the potential for getting one or both would have to be very high.”

Anaheim recently struck out in its bid for an expansion NHL team, with the league awarding 1992-93 entries to Ottawa, Canada and Tampa, Fla. According to Smith, the Anaheim presentation was received “not too favorably, primarily because this TV market is already covered with the Kings and there are many, many other markets out there without hockey on TV.”

Likewise, proposed NBA expansion into Anaheim runs into a two-headed dead end known as the Lakers and the Clippers. “The L.A. area already has two basketball franchises,” Smith said. “It would be very difficult to convince the NBA to expand here under those conditions.”

Anaheim’s only hope is to beg, borrow or steal existing franchises. For this, it must be admitted that the city has a knack. It lured the Angels from the city of Angels in 1966 and hijacked the Rams down the freeway in 1980.

Enticingly, Smith notes that “it would be interesting to see how many leases come up for renewal before the completion of the arena. There are a few.”

The Clippers-as-a-wild-card is a notion that has been bounced back and forth since the franchise’s San Diego days. Do they or don’t they want to move? Last year, they were closing in on a long-term agreement to remain in the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Now, Smith says, they might be backing away.

“The Clippers are still negotiating,” Smith said. “To the best of my knowledge, the decision to renovate the Coliseum has had an impact on their talks.

“They want the Sports Arena renovated, but most of the attention and the finances of the Coliseum Commission has been diverted to the stadium. Can the Coliseum Commission undertake both? I guess it’s possible.

“What the Clippers want is what this arena can offer--club-type seats, luxury suites. Things that will cost big money.”

Does that mean the Clippers would seriously consider the Anaheim option?

“I really enjoy my job,” Smith said, smiling, “but I don’t think I will have it if I say anything about that.”

This luncheon wasn’t vegetarian. If Smith wasn’t going to serve any real meat, Don Andersen, executive director of the Orange County Sports Assn., did whatever he could.

Andersen: “I recently talked with David Cawood, the associate executive director of the NCAA, and he said that if we could get close to 20,000 (capacity), he could see bringing the Final Four to Anaheim by the end of the ‘90s.

” . . . He said, ‘We’re dying to have a West Coast site besides Salt Lake City and Seattle.’ ”

Andersen said he has also discussed the possibility of hosting a round of the Davis Cup in the arena, as well as the McDonald’s all-star high school basketball game. “And we’d also like to stage some college basketball doubleheaders, like they used to do in Madison Square Garden and Chicago Stadium,” he said. “Bring in some big-name outside teams, let them play Saturday and flip-flop them for Sunday.”

Fine, but those are isolated, once-a-year-at-best kind of events. To break even, Anaheim Arena must be booked 180 dates per year.

They can break ground, but this thing won’t get off the ground without NHL or NBA assistance.

“We’re talking to more than three teams, in both sports,” Smith said. “We’ve seen interest from more than one party. Once the arena begins to develop, once you can see some girders in the ground, I think some owner will come forward.”

“If you build it, they will come.”

It played in Hollywood, but what what can you say about Anaheim?

The city already has one Fantasyland, and it doesn’t need another.