Coastal Panel Approves Sea World Additions : Entertainment: Theme park plans beer-tasting facility and stalls for six Clydesdale horses.

Sea World of San Diego won approval Tuesday from the California Coastal Commission to add several new facilities, including a beer-tasting area and a restaurant, a catering kitchen and a structure that will house half a dozen of Anheuser-Busch’s famed Clydesdale horses.

The improvements, which include nearly 60,000 square feet of new buildings, carry a “multimillion-dollar” price tag, Sea World spokesman Dan LeBlanc said Tuesday. The projects approved by state regulators are “just one part of a whole bunch of things we hope to be doing at the park in 1992,” LeBlanc said.

Tuesday’s 6-2 Coastal Commission vote dealt with a number of proposed facilities, including several with strong ties to Anheuser-Busch Entertainment Corp., Sea World’s St. Louis-based parent company.

The commission, responding to a staff report that questioned how much more traffic the facilities will generate, ordered Sea World to issue attendance reports during the peak summer months. The planned additions also are subject to various city approvals.

The newest additions at the aquatic park on Mission Bay will be built on land that now houses the Parent’s Store and Places of Learning, two attractions that former Sea World owner Harcourt Brace Jovanovich added near the park’s main entrance during the 1980s. The Parent’s Store might eventually be relocated in the park or elsewhere, LeBlanc said.

Sea World plans to build an “Anheuser-Busch Hospitality Center” that will include a 30,000-square-foot restaurant and beer-tasting facility. The center will blend the heritages of Sea World, a marine park, and Anheuser-Busch, best known for its brewing.

The park also plans to build stalls and support facilities for the famed Clydesdale horses that are synonymous with Anheuser-Busch’s beers. The horses were stabled at Sea World during last year’s winter holiday season, but the planned addition would become a “permanently based” park attraction, LeBlanc said. Sea World also has proposed a small movie theater and museum that would focus on Anheuser-Busch’s history.

A proposed multi-use building would house a catering kitchen to service the growing number of organizations and groups that utilize Sea World for meetings. Sea World’s existing catering operation is housed in A Place to Meet, a former Sea World restaurant that is to be turned over to Hubbs Marine Research Institute, a Sea World-funded research operation. The multiuse building also would include a new employee cafeteria.

Sea World has witnessed a flurry of activity in the two years since Anheuser-Busch acquired the aquatic parks in San Diego, Ohio, Florida and Texas from debt-laden Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Anheuser-Busch has pumped millions of dollars into park maintenance programs that had been cut by HBJ. Anheuser-Busch opened a water ski show earlier this year that became the park’s first new major attraction since Shamu Stadium made its debut in 1987.

During an interview this past summer, Sea World of San Diego President C. Michael Cross hinted that additional projects were on the way. Cross also said the park was working on a master plan to carry the park past the year 2000 and position it to compete with other Southern California parks.