Urban Concerns Temper the Euphoria Over Westcot : Development: Tourism and jobs are Disney’s magic words. But pollution, traffic issues confront Anaheim.

Once upon a time, Disney’s magic transformed Orange County from orange groves into an international vacationland.

The same purveyors of fantasy are now proposing a resort nearly five times larger than the adjacent Magic Kingdom and they dream of doubling the number of tourists to the area to 25 million annually after 1998.

Company officials say the $3-billion Westcot expansion, announced here last week, would have an energizing ripple sure to be felt throughout Southern California. They say it would create new jobs, generate new tax dollars and clean up a blighted neighborhood around Disneyland.

But far from displacing orange groves, this time Disney is moving into a sprawling, almost overdeveloped county with big urban concerns.

Traffic congestion around Disneyland was an issue long before the company’s “Imagineers” began picturing Westcot’s giant sphere in the theme park’s parking lot. Anaheim, once a city flush with cash, is now facing declining revenue and a deficit projected at $20 million over the next two years.

Once an inviting mecca for employment opportunities, the county has been hit by a recession that has caused layoffs and produced lean months for businesses large and small.

There are environmental concerns to address too: How will a county caught in the clutches of a five-year drought support a park planning to maintain a 6-acre lake and acres more of lush vegetation and green public plazas?

Disney says it can help solve some of the problems its project will create. Others anticipate a jump start for the economy, and say growth is just the ticket.

“Where progress has been stopped, you find a deteriorating economy and a deteriorating lifestyle,” said Orange County Chamber of Commerce Chairman Paul Mitchell. “It sounds like the expansion would do for us all over again what the first Disneyland did.”

So there are a number of concerns that park planners, government officials and residents will be weighing in the coming months as Disney attempts to decide whether to locate its second Southern California theme park in Anaheim or Long Beach, where the company has proposed a $2.8-billion ocean theme park called Port Disney. Here is a look at some of the issues.

JOBS

Disney has not yet released any details on just how many jobs would be added to the Orange County economy if the company chooses to build the Anaheim project.

But a source deeply involved in the project said its economic impact “should not be significantly different” from the proposed Port Disney project in Long Beach.

That project, according to a fiscal impact report prepared by the Brentwood consulting firm of Kotin, Regan & Mouchly Inc., would create 27,100 construction-related jobs in Long Beach through the year 2000, when the first building phase would be completed.

In addition, first-phase construction would create another 21,000 jobs in Los Angeles and four surrounding counties.

A second phase of construction would create an additional 10,800 jobs, for a total of 58,900 jobs, according to the report.

Both the Anaheim and Long Beach projects are designed to accommodate about 13 million visitors a year, so job creation in the two areas is anticipated to be roughly equivalent.

When fully developed, Port Disney would support 23,900 jobs--directly and indirectly--in Long Beach, and another 12,800 jobs in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Orange counties for a total of 36,700 new jobs.

That amount is less than the estimated 45,000 jobs created statewide by Florida’s Walt Disney World, which is visited by an estimated 28.5 million people annually, but the entire Florida resort area was built from nothing, while Anaheim and Long Beach already have restaurants, hotels and other businesses that would welcome the additional business, said Abraham Pizam, director of the University of Central Florida’s Dick Pope Sr. Institute for Tourism Studies in Orlando.

“Obviously, you’ll have a real kicker to the economy,” said James Doti, director of business forecasting at Chapman College’s Center for Economic Research. “The problem is that lots of the jobs will be in service employment and pay low wages. . . . Those people will find it hard to live in Orange County, they might have to live in the Inland Empire.”

TRAFFIC

With 13 million additional visitors a year and more than 50,000 jobs possibly coming from Disney’s expansion work alone, the biggest worry for most residents and government officials alike is traffic congestion.

One potential drawback to the creation of so many jobs in Anaheim is increased traffic congestion as low-wage workers commute from outlying areas to Disney’s pricey resort, Doti said.

Disney officials boast that their proposed system of freeway connector ramps to parking garages, moving sidewalks and “people movers” will actually reduce traffic congestion now attributable to Disneyland at nearby intersections.

But traffic experts caution that the key phrase here is “attributable to Disneyland” because the entire area is expected to grow dramatically, as will traffic, from a new sports arena, development of additional office space and creation of hundreds of new retail establishments.

“The extent of traffic mitigation that is going to be needed for a project of this size will really require more mass transit,” said Frank Hotchkiss, a planner and architect with the Planning Center, a Newport Beach-based firm. “It’s very possible that they can work out the traffic immediately around the site, but the regional traffic implications and the air-quality concerns are very serious.”

Caltrans officials say that the Santa Ana Freeway, which is being widened from six to 10 lanes over the next five years, can probably handle the extra traffic produced by Disney’s expansion plans, but they’re worried about weekends, when severe congestion is not limited to the regular morning and evening commute hours that most Disney-bound tourists tend to avoid anyway.

Currently, the segment of the Santa Ana Freeway near Disneyland carries about 159,000 vehicles a day, 6,231 of which are estimated to be headed to and from the park. After the freeway is widened, the segment near Disneyland is expected to carry about 200,000 vehicles per day, and the number of cars going to and from Disneyland alone would double to more than 12,000 vehicles--unless mass transit becomes readily available.

AIR POLLUTION

The environmental impact report for the Santa Ana Freeway widening project states that although air pollution in the vicinity will decline, levels will still exceed federal clean-air standards. Although the report took area growth into account up until the year 2010, no expansion of Disneyland was factored into the environmental review.

In order to expand Disneyland, Disney officials must overcome several air-quality obstacles.

First, they must obtain permits from the South Coast Air Quality Management District before they can add new pollution-emitting machinery, such as gasoline-powered motors used to run some attractions. Air quality officials said that for every pound of new emissions Disney’s on-site equipment will produce, 1.2 pounds must be eliminated somewhere else.

This can be accomplished, air officials said, by replacing existing, dirtier machinery with brand-new equipment, which is often 80% to 90% cleaner in emissions compared to gear produced in the 1970s.

Or the company can offset new pollution by reducing it at other company facilities in the air basin, such as Disney’s Burbank studios. Also, Disney could buy air-pollution credits from firms that have reduced emissions more than the law requires. Some companies pay finder’s fees to brokers who locate firms that have credits to sell.

UTILITIES

The Disney expansion would require large amounts of water, electricity and sewer capacity, but providing those utilities is not expected to strain city and county systems.

“We have been talking to Disney about water and electric requirements, but they are still in a pretty rough stage,” said Ray Merchant, spokesman for the city of Anaheim.

Finding adequate water isn’t considered a problem because Anaheim gets most of its supply from the county’s ground water basin, which is fairly well-stocked even after the five-year drought.

The city plans to work with the company to maximize use of reclaimed water. Disneyland officials declined to reveal the 80-acre park’s water consumption, but they say the largest use is for bathrooms.

Because of the drought, Disneyland cut its water use by about 15% last year by installing water-saver toilets and washing down Main Street and its other streets four days a week instead of nightly.

Most of the park’s water rides, pools and attractions are linked to a huge water network that recycles 15 million gallons at the park.

The city also expects few problems arranging to provide electricity, Merchant said.

Disneyland now uses about 19 megawatts of power. Each megawatt can power about 720 homes. The new Disney projects would use perhaps an additional 75 to 100 megawatts, although that is “a very preliminary” estimate, Merchant said. The peak demand for the entire city of Anaheim is 523 megawatts.

TOURISM

Of all the Southland tourism watchers who are hoping to benefit from Disneyland’s expansion, Movieland Wax Museum’s Mark Edwards said it most plainly: “Disney is going to get the bulk of the business; we’re going to be the little sucker fish on the shark.”

From Magic Mountain in Valencia to Sea World in San Diego, people in the business of amusing the public agreed that additional visitors to Disneyland would benefit Southern California’s entire tourism economy.

“It could help,” said Dan LeBlanc, a Sea World spokesman, who said the park’s 1990 sales were flat. “Witness what Disney World has done for Orlando. That’s basically a flagship theme park for the area.”

The number of tourists visiting Orange County last year fell for the first time in six years, to 38.5 million. They spent $4.5 billion, according to the Anaheim Area Visitor & Convention Bureau.

Tourism industry analysts have said that the local tourism industry has been crippled by the national and local recessions. In addition, tourist-related travel fell because of fears of terrorism stemming from the Persian Gulf War.

Many are hopeful that an expanded Disneyland will act as a magnet for tourists, as the original Disneyland did when it opened 35 years ago.

“We hope it will be the impetus to bring people into the community,” said Cathy Kerns, a spokeswoman for Rank Leisure U.S.A., which has just opened Wild Bill’s Wild West Dinner Extravaganza in Buena Park and is building another dinner theater called King Henry’s Feast, about 1 mile from Disneyland in Anaheim.

COST TO TAXPAYERS

The public bankroll needed to satisfy Disney’s appetite for additional acreage, construction and transportation improvements for its massive Westcot Center proposal has Anaheim number-crunchers working overtime.

From a tangle of revenue-producing redevelopment and “benefit” districts to the misery of parking taxes or increased hotel levies, City Councilman Tom Daly said city staffers are looking at “every known mechanism” to defray what is expected to be a hefty bottom line for the city.

Already, Disney officials have said they expect the city to pick up the tab for at least 50 acres of prime property--in an area where recent sales have gone for more than $1 million an acre--for three multistory parking structures. A commitment of unknown additional tens of millions would likely be needed for more freeway ramps to whisk visitors from the Santa Ana Freeway directly to the Disney parking spaces.

Although city officials cry they are cash poor, Anaheim has a number of funding options available. Each option, unfortunately, is certain to make life more expensive for Anaheim residents, businesses and visitors.

A leading option--already the subject of preliminary discussions among council members and staff--is taxing businesses and individuals for the privilege of using public parking areas. The Anaheim Parking Authority was created several years ago, but the City Council has never used its power to tax businesses or individual motorists.

Preliminary estimates are that such levies could produce a few million dollars each year, Daly said. Typically, officials said, parking authorities take existing public land or acquire new property for parking lots and charge nearby businesses for the privilege of providing employee parking.

When considering tax increases, officials say there is sentiment to hike the hotel-occupancy tax rate. Currently, tourists are hit with an 11% tax on room rates in Anaheim, which officials say is just below the average 11.6% for major tourist destinations in the country.

The heft of Disney’s expected financial demands, some officials say, could be handled by creating a redevelopment district to incorporate Disneyland and the surrounding areas outlined in the new Disney plan. Although controversial, such a district would assess levies on owners within the district based on property values. But such districts also bring with them the unpopular powers afforded to city governments that allow them to condemn land.

Instead, Anaheim could create a “benefit assessment district.” In such districts, established by a vote of the property owners in the subject area, taxes would be determined on the potential benefit each business would receive from the new development. The amount of tax would largely hinge on the owners’ proximity to the project. That money could then be designated by the district to pay for improvements needed by the Disney development.

Times staff writers Marla Cone, Jeffrey A. Perlman, Bob Schwartz and free-lance writer Anne Michaud contributed to this story.

Planned Disney Highlights

ATTRACTIONS: A giant entertainment center--more than five times the size of the current park. Includes Westcot Center, a futuristic world centered around a huge golden sphere called Spacestation Earth. Themed pavilions would focus on human biology, the natural environment and the universe. Also a 5,000-seat amphitheater and a shopping, dining and leisure center.

HOTELS: A renovated Disneyland Hotel and three new hotels totaling more than 5,100 rooms. Each hotel would have a distinctive style evoking different Southern California hotels and landmarks.

TRANSIT: Three off-site parking garages, each four to five stories tall, housing a combined total of 28,000 cars. Also electrically powered people-movers and moving sidewalks.

COST AND SIZE: $3 billion on 470 acres

EMPLOYMENT: nearly 37,000

CONSTRUCTION TIME: six years