Anaheim Casino Backers Hope to Avoid the Voters

Despite vigorous opposition from Disneyland and community groups, a cadre of investors delivered plans to the City Council Wednesday for a $60-million entertainment complex here that they said would be the biggest casino in Southern California.

In a move sure to provoke intense lobbying by both sides, private investors working in concert with the Los Angeles area Commerce Club are gambling that they can persuade the five-member council to approve the mammoth project without putting it before city residents for a vote. The project is proposed for an industrial area in the city’s northeast sector.

But Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, giving a surprisingly swift response to a plan just hours old, said Wednesday that he will recommend rejection of the casino proposal.

“The people who live in Anaheim are relating to me in crystal-clear terms that the city’s response to this proposal should be ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ ” Daly said.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition accused the plan’s proponents of “deceptive (and) hardball” tactics, and said activists will insist on a public vote.

“They are calling this an entertainment complex, but really it’s just a gambling den,” he said. “This is totally contrary to the wonderful image that we have with the Angels, the Rams, the Convention Center and, of course, Disneyland.”

Voters last spring defeated card club proposals in Cypress, Stanton and four other cities across the state, mostly by overwhelming margins. But as objectionable as the idea of a card club sharing the same city with Disneyland may seem to some, economic times may force its consideration, several council members said.

“In this kind of climate it’s like holding out water to a starving man,” Councilman Bob D. Simpson said.

Even Daly acknowledged that the money the casino could bring the city is “enticing.”

If proponents did have to risk a citywide ballot initiative, “it would cause us to rethink what we’re going to do,” acknowledged Michael Franchetti, a top aide to former Gov. George Deukmejian, who is heading a development group working with the Commerce Club on the plan.

Franchetti said Commerce Club officials would be hired to operate the 200-table gaming casino--which would include poker, low ball and other card games.

A former state prosecutor, Franchetti is chairman of Southland Entertainment Properties Inc., an Anaheim-based company created earlier this year to pursue the casino idea. He and his wife, along with Orange County businessmen William Cooper and Robert Lindley, are the majority owners, Franchetti said. He refused to say how much they have already invested in the proposal.

Proponents have prepared artists’ renderings of the complex and glossy brochures, touting it as an $11-million-a-year financial boon to Anaheim and promising to establish a $1-million charitable trust that would fund unspecified Anaheim nonprofit groups. The trust would be headed by former California Angel baseball player Doug DeCinces.

Proponents also predicted the casino would bring 2,200 jobs to the Anaheim area.

They have already begun contacting key local leaders, including Disneyland executives and the Revs. Sheldon and Robert Schuller, to promote their idea.

But it may be a tough sell. “We are against card clubs or anything that will tarnish Anaheim’s image as a family destination,” Disneyland President Jack Lindquist said this week.

The backers said they are looking at several sites in the area around the Orange County Steel Salvage facility near the Riverside Freeway, just east of Kraemer Boulevard. The proposed complex would include a large theater with live entertainment, an upscale restaurant, a shopping concourse, corporate conference rooms and some 200 gaming tables spread over a 30- to 40-acre lot.