Anaheim Expands Scope of Disney Study

Saying that the city needs to take a closer look at Disneyland’s proposed expansion, the City Council voted Tuesday to pay its consultants an additional $50,000 to continue examining the project’s possible economic benefit to Anaheim.

CGMS Inc., a San Francisco-based consulting firm, and Economic and Planning Systems Inc., based in Berkeley, were hired by the city last March at a cost of $101,000 to study the proposed $3-billion Disneyland Resort expansion and provide counsel during the city’s negotiations with the entertainment company.

The consulting firms have almost completed their contracted tasks, but city officials said the expansion plan was more complex than originally projected and believe that more work must be done.

“After we started out, we found out there were a lot more financial aspects to this project than we thought,” said Thomas J. Wood, deputy city manager. “We think that it is in the best interest of the city to go through the plan thoroughly.”

He said the companies are looking at various “financing mechanisms” that the city could use to pay for street, landscaping and transportation improvements in the Disneyland area. He declined to say what he meant by financing mechanisms, but said the firms are “not necessarily” examining new taxes that the city could levy to pay for improvements to benefit Disney.

City officials have said that such improvements could cost the city up to $500 million.

Disneyland President Jack Lindquist has said the expansion will not go through if an entertainment admission tax is imposed. The levy, which would tax admission to all entertainment venues in the city, has been discussed by city leaders in years past but never imposed.

“(The firms’) role is to assist the city in considering its options,” Wood said. “We have not specified to them which of several different options we want them to focus on.”

Disney has said it wants to build a second Southern California theme park and has narrowed its proposed sites to Anaheim and Long Beach.