From Baseball to a Much Grander Experience

Pie in the sky, cut into five exceedingly rich slices, was served up at an Anaheim Stadium news conference earlier this week.

How rich?

“About a billion dollars,” for the whole pie, was one estimate.

“Hundreds of millions” was another, more conservative, guess.

No, the Mighty Ducks weren’t announcing their season ticket packages for 1996-97. But the name of Disney was invoked, as was The Pond, and there were large, elaborately detailed maps of what appeared to be five new appendages to the magic kingdom.

There was a gridironland--an NFL-sized football stadium surrounded by souvenir stores, toy stores, sporting good stores, cafes and a pair of 250-room hotels.

There was a ball & batland--a major league ballpark encircled by orange groves, formal gardens, movie theaters, performance stages, sports-themed restaurants and another 250-room hotel.

There was a little leagueland--a youth sports complex touted as “a field of dreams” for soccer-, football- and baseball-playing tykes.

There was a rodeoland--a championship rodeo facility sharing acreage with a Western stage theater, cowboy bars, cowboy restaurants and cowboy souvenir stands.

And there was a monorail station--to whisk customers to and fro between the existing Disneyland and these outlying vistas of the fanciful future.

These five lands--”districts,” according to official promotional literature--were grouped under the umbrella heading “Sportstown Anaheim,” most likely because “Fantasyland” was already taken.

Sportstown, according to the various speakers who stood at the podium, is “new” and “fun” and “visionary” (especially “visionary”), and that vision, according to the promotional literature, is “to create an urban village that combines the largest urban entertainment center in the country with three spectacular new professional sporting facilities in an urban setting consisting of office towers, broadcast centers, exhibit halls, hotels, mass transit stations . . . on 150 acres located within two miles of one of the largest convention centers in America and one of the greatest tourist destinations in the world.”

Or, if you prefer the condensed version:

“Put up your dukes, Hollywood Park, we’re going after the Seahawks, too.”

This is the plan Anaheim wants the NFL to see, and believe in--the blueprint to replace the Rams while appeasing the Angels, who want a new stadium, and the Ducks, who want more money, and Gene Autry, who likes rodeos.

In other words, this is Utopia, which has never been found on any map of Orange County to this point.

Lacking a cool billion, it may be impossible to ever get there from here, but at least it’s an idea, and it’s on paper, and it looks like a way to lure people to Anaheim on a midsummer’s night, even with the Angels playing at home that evening.

Now, can it be done?

Greg Smith, stadium general manager for the city of Anaheim, said he envisions a construction plan implemented in phases--for example, the football “district” first, which would take three to four years, followed by the baseball “district,” and so forth, depending on the funding available.

The entire project, Smith said, could be finished in 15 years. And the cost of the entire project?

“Obviously,” he said, “it would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Not so obvious is where those hundreds of millions of dollars will come from.

“The corporate community,” Smith proposed. “Retail developers. We see a major retail developer becoming partners with the city, which is contributing the land. The land is valued at $800,000 per acre and there are 150 acres in all, so if you’re a developer who doesn’t have to pay for this land, you can see that this plan is very financially feasible.”

But a billion dollars?

That’s an awful lot of Hard Rock Cafes and Barnes & Noble bookstores to cram into the Anaheim Stadium parking lot. The place would look like Son of CityWalk--exploding neon and ringing cash registers attacking the consumer at every turn--which, as it turns out, is precisely the idea. The Jerde Partnership, which designed CityWalk in Universal City, developed the master plan for Sportstown. So, Orange County parents of the 21st century, be forewarned: Here is the potential destination for your children’s weekly allowance.

There are a few other kinks as well.

The name, for instance. “Sportstown”--a little too Mighty Duck-cute for comfort. It conjures images of Disney and other cultish outfits, such as “Jonestown,” and ‘Niketown.” Be careful around the designer Kool-Aid stands, kids.

And what about parking? Sportstown planners lay claim to 14,000 “on-site” parking spaces, but currently, the Anaheim Stadium lot has room for 15,000 spaces. How do you put a football stadium, three hotels, corporate offices, a broadcast center, theaters, orange groves, restaurants and a virtual North Coast Plaza on the existing parking lot and lose only 1,000 parking slots?

Planners say: You park in the orange groves. On the grass, under “shade trees,” same as you do at Knott’s Berry Farm. These orange groves are supposed to begin just beyond Anaheim Stadium’s right field fence and extend past the 57 Freeway, all the way to the Santa Ana River bed.

That must be the reason for the Metrolink station just to the north of the stadium. After driving to Sportstown, fans will need to take a train in from the parking lot.

But, 15 years is a lot of time to draw up plans for the world’s tallest parking structure.

“We have gone,” Smith said, “from baseball being an event of peanuts, hot dogs and nine great innings to a grander experience that includes VIP parking, a pregame sushi snack, mascots, instant replay, video animation and fireworks.”

Sportstown, one day, is supposed to attend to these peripheral “recreational and entertainment” needs.

In the meantime, how does one go about booking those nine great innings?