Citizens Panel May Rise From Ashes of Disney Project : Planning: Disney Citizen Advisory Committee is urged to continue its efforts to develop the waterfront area.

City officials said last week that they would like to keep the Disney Citizen Advisory Committee alive, even though the proposed Disney theme park is dead.

“We’d like to use you and keep you involved,” Mayor Ernie Kell told the 55-member group formed to review the Disney proposal from the public’s perspective. “We’d like to re-create another task force to look at other things” for the proposed park site.

Kell said the language of the City Council resolution, which originally created the committee, called for its automatic dissolution if the Disney project fell through.

To get around that, Councilman Warren Harwood said he would propose the committee’s continuation at the next council meeting.

“Dispersing this committee is foolish,” Harwood declared. “I say it isn’t over. There’s no reason to disband.”

City leaders say they are eager to develop some sort of attraction on the waterfront property that Disney was targeting for a $3-billion resort and aquatic park. Though Disney recently decided to instead build a new theme park in Anaheim, it may consider developing a smaller attraction on the site.

The company still has a lease option on the Queen Mary property and is asking the city for an extension of its mid-March deadlines to act on the agreement.

David Malmuth, the Disney Development Co. vice president who oversaw the Long Beach project, said the company needed more time to devise alternative plans. He and city officials will discuss an extension on the lease when they meet in early January, Malmuth added.

If Disney decides to abandon the site entirely, local officials say they will pursue other schemes.

“I feel this is a very important time for our city,” Kell said. “I hope the committee . . . will work together to achieve some type of goal, whether it’s Disney or a cruise line coming in.”

Kell and port officials have suggested a cruise ship terminal as a possibility for the tract. But Harwood, an antagonist of the mayor’s, repeated his criticism of the idea.

“What you can do is help us show that a cruise ship terminal isn’t going to do any good,” he told the committee. “(Passengers are) coming to Long Beach to park their cars and to go out to sea. They’re not going to stay in a Long Beach hotel for three days when they have an expensive floating hotel.”