Disney Moving Cautiously on Westcot Project, Eisner Says : Tourism: Chairman says the $3-billion Anaheim theme park and resort is on track unless ‘obstacles become too great.’

Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael D. Eisner was cautious Monday about prospects for his company’s $3-billion Westcot resort project in Anaheim, saying it would go ahead unless “the obstacles become too great.”

He said the project has such a large scope that a planning misstep could be catastrophic even for a huge corporation like Disney, which said Monday that it earned $260.3 million on revenue of $2.39 billion in its latest fiscal quarter. So the company is carefully scrutinizing the expansion project before going ahead with it.

Eisner’s comments came at the opening of Mickey’s Toontown, a ride and attraction area behind the It’s a Small World attraction at Disneyland. Toontown is supposed to be a cartoon world come to life with a small roller coaster, Mickey and Minnie’s houses and such interactive play areas as an “acorn crawl” and “Goofy’s Bounce House.”

Eisner’s comments follow a November address in Orange County when he bluntly warned that a chilly California economy could deep-six Westcot.

Westcot, which would be an internationally flavored theme park with three signature hotels, would create more than 28,000 jobs and could transform aging Anaheim, its supporters say. But residents around Disneyland, where the project would be built, have voiced concerns about increased traffic and noise.

Eisner noted that “California is having some fundamental problems” and that “it is difficult for any business to work in California.”

For the Westcot project to work, it must draw the kind of 11-million-a-year crowd that has made Disneyland successful for 37 years. That is, about half or more must be foreign or domestic tourists.

Now, however, many foreign tourists are “afraid to come to California,” Eisner said.

Despite those troubles, Eisner said his project team is proceeding with the approval process to build Westcot. The Disney team is replying to letters about the project received during the public comment period of the environmental review process. Eisner sounded a hopeful note when he said, “We would only not go forward if the obstacles became too great.”

Disney officials have said previously that the company has sunk more than $2 million into planning for the resort.

Disney’s lavish spending on new attractions at Disneyland should not, however, be taken as any indicator that the company would build Westcot, said Eisner, who declined Monday to deny or confirm speculation that the two-acre Toontown attraction cost as much as $100 million to build.

He did discuss a new high-technology Indiana Jones adventure ride that would be built at Disneyland as well, although no opening date is set.

“We will always keep Disneyland changing and growing,” he said.