How Disney Park Would Benefit 2 Sites
The city of Anaheim has less to gain from a $3-billion investment by Walt Disney Co. in a second California theme park than its rival Long Beach, according to a report released Tuesday by the entertainment giant.
Anaheim would reap about $9 million less in tax revenue and about 7,100 fewer jobs than its rival, the city of Long Beach, which Disney could select by year-end for a competing ocean-oriented theme park and hotel complex.
The 27-page Disney report said Anaheim would receive an estimated 17,500 new jobs and net annual revenue of $38 million if the proposed Disneyland Resort, featuring a world’s fair-style theme park called Westcot, were built in Disneyland’s 100-acre parking lot along with three huge new hotels.
The city of Long Beach, by contrast, would garner an estimated 24,600 new jobs and $47 million in additional annual taxes from a Port Disney, an aquatic theme park and five new hotels circling the site of the Disney-operated Queen Mary and Spruce Goose attraction, says a similar report released last year by the same consultants.
In addition, the Long Beach project would create 37,000 new jobs in all of Southern California, compared to 28,000 for the Anaheim project.
Allen Epstein, a vice president for Disney Development Co., said Long Beach would gain more economically from the project than Anaheim because of factors involving length of stay, consumer behavior and other factors. He declined, however, to disclose any of those factors.
The Disney report was prepared by the Los Angeles-based consulting firm of Kotin, Regan & Mouchly Inc. Disney said it would decide by Dec. 31 whether to build in Anaheim or Long Beach, with “community support” being a major factor in determining where the new resort complex is located.
