NEWS ANALYSIS : Disney’s Powerhouse Push Left Foes Outnumbered : Development: Behind-scenes strategy paves the way for approval of the $3-billion resort in Anaheim.

It was supposed to be a public hearing on the impacts of the $3-billion Disneyland Resort, but it looked more like a pep rally, complete with booster signs and campaign-like buttons.

Before Anaheim City Council members heard a single negative comment about the project at the June 9 hearing, they listened to hours of testimony from an army of Disney supporters who packed the hotel conference room and sung the resort’s praises.

“It’s a love fest,” said one attorney opposed to the project as she waited five hours for a mere five minutes at the microphone. “Is Mickey Mouse going to speak, too?”

It was vintage Disney. It was also an example of how the Walt Disney Co. has gone to great lengths to sway public opinion.

But even as the company last week passed another key deadline in the long process toward realizing the mammoth expansion relatively unscathed, Disney officials insisted they had no “master plan” for fighting those opposing the project. A review of the company’s actions this past year, however, clearly indicates there was an overall strategy that coupled “love fests” like the Anaheim council meeting with a sophisticated lobbying effort and a play-tough attitude toward the project’s critics.

At every opportunity, company officials have attempted to thwart opposition to their ambitious plans for building a new theme park and resort next to Disneyland. Working with the city, Disney has intimidated, cajoled and refused to compromise to scare critics away. When that didn’t work, behind-the-scenes concessions and negotiations were employed to eliminate the concerns of many potential litigants.

When the dust settled last week, most serious legal threats were eliminated. Only three lawsuits ended up being filed by the deadline last Monday. Two were on behalf of a group of property and hotel owners, and the last was by a school district that plans to withdraw the suit when a tentative agreement is finalized.

As proposed, Disney’s expansion will include a theme park called Westcot, 5,600 hotel rooms, a 5,000-seat amphitheater, a retail shopping district and two of the nation’s largest parking garages.

A project of such scope is sure to raise the hackles of some residents, business people and community activists.

“Disney’s put a lot of time behind this project,” said Doug Kintz, a resident opposed to the plans. “They’ve strategized this whole thing. And it gives the appearance of a conspiracy, or collusion, the way they’ve gotten what they want. Who really runs this city anyway?”

Disney officials flatly reject any such conspiracy theories. But from the outset, they knew that public perception was important to the viability of the project. That knowledge was reinforced by the company’s experience three years ago in Long Beach, where it ended up dumping plans to build an ocean-theme park, in part because of public concerns over environmental problems.

In Anaheim, they made sure they were a step ahead of public opinion.

“It’s our job . . . to educate people,” said Ken Wong, a senior vice president for Disney Development Co. “We need to make sure that we make an effort . . . to get our point of view across.”

The lessons of Long Beach also weren’t lost on Anaheim officials who are eager to use the Disneyland Resort as a vehicle to overhaul a deteriorating urban setting that is dotted with low-rent motels and tourist stores.

“This is going to be the economic engine in this city for years to come,” Deputy City Manager Tom Wood said early on in the review process. “The benefits far outweigh the adverse impacts.”

To head off opposition to the resort, Disney went on a marketing campaign to sell it to the community.

Publicly, Disney officials held town meetings about the resort, released newsletters and studies that detailed the project’s job and revenue rewards, and even Disney Chairman Michael Eisner gave an ominous speech that seemed to threaten the public and all levels of governments to back the plan, or face the consequences of Disney’s withdrawing the proposal.

Privately, Disney officials conferred with politicians looking for support, met with top editors of local newspapers to detail the project’s benefits, and forged a strong working relationship with Anaheim officials to achieve similar goals.

Even before the project’s environmental impact report was released, Disney had consulted extensively with important governmental agencies, such as the Air Quality Management District and Southern California Assn. of Governments, to make sure its plans would address their concerns.

“The Disney people were very proactive in the process,” said Bret Felker, Caltrans deputy director of project management, who met with Disney officials about the resort.

When it came time to unveil the EIR, Disney officials briefed reporters over sodas and coffee, showing them a presentation of charts, slides and handouts that highlighted the efforts the company made to minimize environmental problems.

To Disney, the public review process was critical. It would be a 45-day period that would expose the project’s opponents. It would also be a period where Disney and city officials would take rigid, seemingly uncompromising stances on a variety of issues.

When people began complaining that 45 days were not enough to sift through reams of environmental documents, the city publicly, and Disney privately, were unwilling to budge. Finally, less than two weeks before the deadline, the city extended the process by 22 days.

“They were playing hardball,” said one consultant who asked for more time to review the documents on behalf of his clients. The consultant, who wished to remain anonymous because he still has business with the city and Disney, added: “They used the type of rhetoric intended to make people less likely to litigate.”

Over the course of the review process and two public hearings, dozens of homeowners and businesses complained bitterly that the project had a negative impact on their quality of life. Most residents’ complaints centered on traffic congestion and noise pollution, while school districts were concerned about overcrowding caused by the influx of an estimated 28,000 workers for the resort.

At the end of the review, only slight changes were made to the project’s plans. Nearly all the changes seemed to address the concerns of many people who had hired attorneys.

“They gave little carrots to everybody but the project didn’t really change,” Kintz said.

The attorney for the Fujishige family, for example, successfully had the family’s 58-acre strawberry farm withdrawn from Disney’s plans to build a third theme park on that plot sometime in the next century. Disney officials said a third theme park was not an integral part of their plans.

When Odetics Inc., a high-tech electronics firm, was concerned that one of three configurations for a massive parking garage was too near its building, Disney dropped the option.

Slight changes in the design of another parking garage also appeased nearby condominium owners who were represented by a lawyer.

Wong said that changes were not made because of the threat of lawsuits.

“Really, what happens in this process is that you have your eyes and ears open and listen as issues are identified and immediately go to work on them,” he said. “If it’s possible to modify the project, mitigate an impact and still protect the overall concept . . . we will.”

But where Disney was unwilling to make concessions, it would ultimately make compromises in most cases where opposition persisted.

Nowhere was Disney’s muscle in deal making more evident than in its handling of the problem presented by school district officials, who blasted the proposed resort’s environmental analysis for not fully assessing what they said will be devastating school crowding.

Disney officials immediately went on the offensive.

In April, Kerry Hunnewell, a vice president for Disney Development Co. who was in charge of the project, said that the entertainment giant was presenting a project that would boost employment and revenue in the city, but couldn’t “be responsible for all of society’s ills,” referring to budget and facility shortages in the schools.

Hunnewell said that the schools seemed bent on suing the project and that such litigation could kill Disney’s commitment to building it.

At the same time Disney officials were reacting to the charges from the districts, a group of Disney boosters--calling themselves WESTCOT 2000--wrote letters to newspapers and made speeches at rallies and city public hearings, slamming school officials for being opportunists who viewed Disney as a cash cow ready to be milked.

Furthermore, Anaheim and Disney officials refused to even discuss the districts’ concerns until the environmental and planning documents seemed headed for City Council approval in June.

When negotiations were opened, it was because Disney asked the governor’s secretary of education and child development to try to mediate a resolution to the district’s concerns.

As a result of the discussions, four districts agreed to drop their plans to sue in exchange for promises from Disney to offer educational programs that include music, job training, art and other such programs.

Disney offered the Anaheim Union High School District a 12-point program that includes tutoring, training for teachers and school employees, public relations and marketing training, an educational advisory board and an orchestra program.

Anaheim City School District was the only district to file a lawsuit.

Initially, the district was excluded from the negotiations among the other districts and the state, Disney and city. Sources close to those discussions said that Disney was trying to isolate the Anaheim City Schools because it seemed the most determined to sue.

About two weeks ago, Disney began making overtures to district officials, who said that if they had been included in the talks at the time the other districts were approached, the lawsuit would most likely have been unnecessary. But they acknowledged that the lawsuit will mostly likely be withdrawn because recent negotiations with the city and Disney have been very productive, largely because the city is prepared to make monetary concessions.

“Things look good now,” said Supt. Mel Lopez of Anaheim City School District.

Disney officials agree.

After more than nine months of public scrutiny of the project, most critics have been silenced.

Wong credited the lack of opposition to Disney’s painstaking approach of studying the impacts of the project and addressing them early in the planning stages.

“I think we have done, and the city has done, a good job,” Wong said. Then, in typical Disney fashion, he downplayed the progress and remarked that the company still must grapple with who will pay for $800 million in public infrastructure costs. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”