'Mouse Land' Plan Stirs Big Squeak From Anaheim Neighbors : Theme park: Disney's $3-billion proposal would increase traffic, noise and pollution, homeowners say. The firm was invited to the meeting but declined, an activist says.

‘Mouse Land’ Plan Stirs Big Squeak From Anaheim Neighbors : Theme park: Disney’s $3-billion proposal would increase traffic, noise and pollution, homeowners say. The firm was invited to the meeting but declined, an activist says.

By KEVIN JOHNSON

May 25, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ANAHEIM —

Described by one resident as a “monster in our back yards,” Disney’s huge Westcot Center expansion proposal flunked a popularity test Friday night at a meeting of a local homeowners group.

Surprising even some of the group’s officers, about 100 members of Anaheim Homeowners Maintaining Their Environment arrived at the Loara High School auditorium loaded with fears.

They complained about the prospects of increased traffic, noise, air pollution and the potential public costs of building the company’s proposed $3-billion project next to Disneyland.

“Do we want this expansion? Do we want mouse land?” the group’s president, Curtis Stricker, asked the audience. “Do we want to buy the parking garages?”

“No!” the audience responded each time.

Stricker referred to Disney’s proposal that the city buy land and pay for building two planned multistory parking garages.

He said Disney executives were invited to attend Friday’s meeting to discuss the expansion announced two weeks ago, but they declined because they said the meeting fell too close to the Memorial Day weekend.

The meeting of the group, which has a roster of 1,500 members, marked one of the first signs of organized opposition to the plan.

According to Disney’s proposal, the expansion would add Westcot Center, three new hotels, a retail district and heavily landscaped public areas. Disney officials have also said the expansion would provide more than 37,000 new jobs and pump millions of new dollars into the city treasury.

“Where in the hell are 37,000 (employees) going to live?” asked Michael Rizzuto, a retired cigar dealer who lives near the site.

One woman, who lives near the site of what would be a multistory parking garage, said she also could not support Disney’s proposal.

“I don’t want to have a parking garage a mile from my home,” nurse Donna Lee said. “We didn’t move here for that. I think Disneyland occupies a goodly portion of this city already.”

Stricker, who along with the group’s executive committee was barraged with questions, said he would communicate the membership’s position to Disney officials and hope that Disney will listen to the concerns and give his group a voice in planning any project.

“I think it’s great that they (the group’s members) are laying it on the line,” Stricker said during a break in the meeting. “I’m not surprised at the reaction.”