Anaheim Council Drafts Response to Stadium Plan

After meeting behind closed doors for more than three hours Thursday, the City Council emerged with a proposal to present to the Walt Disney Co. for sharing the cost of renovating Anaheim Stadium.

“We’re all working on the numbers, trying to make it work,” City Manager James D. Ruth said after Thursday’s meeting. “I’ve gotten direction from the council and am prepared to go from there.”

Council members said they expect to have some kind of response from the company before the council’s meeting on Tuesday. Disney has set a deadline of March 17 for the issue to be resolved, or it may walk away from buying part of the California Angels.

While they would not disclose specifics of the proposal, several council members said their decision was not unanimous.

The city and Disney are engaged in intense negotiations on how much each will pay of the $100 million in stadium renovations that Disney proposed when it bought 25% of the Angels last month. The company and city also are negotiating other details, including the terms of a new, 30-year-lease.

Mayor Tom Daly said the two sides are “in the final stages of negotiations, but this is not the last out in the ninth inning. We want to make a deal, and we’re working hard to create a fair one.”

Council members would not say whether they had agreed to accept an offer reportedly made by Disney to pay $70 million of the renovations with several conditions attached.

Angels executive Jackie Autry said this week that the city has identified $20 million it could spend on renovations. City officials would not confirm that number.

But Councilman Bob Zemel said Thursday that the council would not be willing to spend any money unless it is guaranteed a way to earn it back.

“This City Council definitely wants to do business, but there must be a return on the investment dollar,” Zemel said. “We are not willing to subsidize.”

Sources said options being considered include turning operations of the stadium over to Disney and leaving the firm with most of the cost of renovations. This would be similar to the situation at the Pond, which is city-owned but privately operated.

Other issues that must make their way into any final agreement with a new owner are the possibility of a National Football League franchise returning to Anaheim and construction of Sportstown Anaheim, the city’s sports, entertainment and retail complex, which has been proposed for property around the Big A, sources said.

Having these issues resolved before an agreement is signed is considered crucial, because Anaheim does not want a repeat of a 12-year legal battle that involved the city, the Angels and the stadium’s former tenant, the Los Angeles Rams.

Last December, the city agreed to pay $13 million to end a dispute over development rights to a portion of the stadium parking lot, which the city granted the Rams as part of a deal to lure them here in 1978.

The talks between Anaheim and Disney have taken on an urgency because of the deadline Disney has imposed on the deal. When major league baseball owners approved the company’s proposal to buy part of the team and assume operational control of the Angels, the company set a 60-day deadline to settle the issue of stadium renovations. If the deadline is not met, Disney has the option to walk away from the purchase.

Disney has commissioned preliminary designs that call for the Big A to be transformed from a 67,000-seat multipurpose stadium to a more intimate baseball-only facility with about 20,000 fewer seats.

Times correspondent Alan Eyerly contributed to this story.