Long Beach Pessimistic on Disney Plan : Resort: Mayor believes the firm is close to pulling the plug on proposed aquatic theme park in favor of a new tourist attraction in Anaheim.

In remarks that suggest Long Beach may be losing the race for the Walt Disney Co.’s new West Coast theme park, Mayor Ernie Kell said Thursday he believes there is an 80% chance the company will select Anaheim as the home of its next $3-billion resort.

The mayor also said he “would not be surprised” if Disney ended within 60 days its yearlong negotiations with Long Beach over the proposed DisneySea complex, a massive aquatic theme park and tourist destination that has drawn both bitter protest and wild applause from around the state.

“I am not as optimistic as I was six months ago,” Kell said in an interview Thursday and in similar remarks Wednesday to a local homeowners’ group. “As someone who has done a little developing in the past . . . I just don’t think it makes as much economic sense for Disney or the city now.”

David Malmuth, a vice president at the Disney Development Co., said Long Beach remains in the running.

“We’re still working on it,” he said. “It’s not a good time to be speculating.”

While other city officials dismissed Kell’s remarks as “just the mayor’s opinion,” they are the most pessimistic public statements to be made by a city official in the nearly two years since Disney pitted Long Beach and Anaheim in a race to become the West Coast tourist Mecca.

The company’s DisneySea would have an aquatic theme park and six hotels along the Long Beach waterfront. It has also proposed a Disneyland Resort with a WESTCOT Center, three hotels and a six-acre lake next to Disneyland in Anaheim. Either project is sure to bring the host city millions in tax and tourist dollars, but Disney says it will build only one. A decision is expected by year’s end.

The mayor said he believed the chances of Disney building in Long Beach had slipped in recent months from 70% to 20%, primarily because of the company’s problems securing permits to build part of the resort on 250 acres of proposed landfill in Long Beach Harbor.

Statewide environmental groups oppose the landfill as an attempt to undermine the California Coastal Act, which Disney sought last year to amend in Sacramento. The legislation, which would have allowed the firm to create landfill for recreational use, failed, causing Disney to suggest scaling back the landfill to 85 acres and leaving the Coastal Act intact.

“I doubt that latest plan will fly,” Kell said, explaining that the smaller scale means Disney would have problems shielding its guests from the cranes, terminals and other industrial sites at the nearby Port of Long Beach. “They always try to create an atmosphere of euphoria at their parks. It’s the size and the shape of the thing . . . I just don’t think it would work for the city or Disney.”

The Long Beach project has been controversial since it was unveiled 16 months ago. While the business community welcomes it as a multimillion-dollar solution to the city’s financial woes, tenants at the Port of Long Beach doubt an amusement park can profitably share the harbor with one of the nation’s largest maritime complexes. More than two-dozen government permits would be needed for Disney to build in the harbor.

The opposition in Anaheim is a murmur by contrast. Disneyland opened there 36 years ago and the city has benefited financially ever since. There are fewer environmental concerns and fewer permits to secure for a new park. That disparity alone has led observers to wonder whether Disney would bother with Long Beach and its hurdles.

“The rumor seems to persist that on or before the end of the year Disney will announce they will not be building in Long Beach,” a city source said Thursday.

Long Beach Harbor Commissioner Alex R. Bellehumeur, who has sat in on negotiations, acknowledged that Long Beach’s chances with Disney slipped when the Coastal Act legislation failed. But he said a deal can still be struck “as long as people are talking.”

“The odds are less than they were,” Bellehumeur said. “But even if the odds are 20% . . . I think there is a solution to be found.”

Officials in Anaheim could not be reached for comment.