Panel OKs Part of Disney Package

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved the first part of a $131-million package for the Walt Disney Co.’s proposed east parking structure in Anaheim, a major piece of Disney’s resort plans.

The committee’s action means approval is likely by the full U.S. House of Representatives, but the appropriations bill containing the project has not yet been through the U.S. Senate.

The panel earmarked only $13 million of the $72 million originally sought as first-year, 1994 funding for the four-year project, but officials are confident that the rest of the money will be forthcoming in future budget years.

The Orange County Transportation Authority repackaged the garage as a transit facility with express bus service, rail connections and park-and-ride space in order to elicit federal support. The $223-million garage project--which would be partly funded by OCTA, Anaheim and Disney--was also made part of a larger grant application that includes new connectors linking car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa and San Diego freeways. That so-called transitway, in turn, will supplement another already under construction on the Santa Ana Freeway, which will help speed motorists to and from Disneyland, among other locations.

The plan drew praise from Rep. Bob Carr (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation.

“Orange County folks are to be commended that they want to do something of an intermediate nature, before running to a light rail system, a very expensive light rail system, like so many others want to do,” said Carr on Tuesday. “My goal is to alleviate the congestion along the I-5 corridor and do it in a way that doesn’t require light rail.”

James McConnell, OCTA’s lobbyist, called it a “first step today toward the realization of the transitway project for Orange County.”

Despite Carr’s distaste for new light-rail projects, OCTA has preliminary engineering studies underway of an elevated urban rail line that would include a passenger station at the Anaheim parking facility approved Tuesday.