Pitches and Hits at Forum for Disney’s Stadium Plan

As city residents and others both blasted and praised a plan to keep the California Angels in Anaheim for at least 23 years, city and Walt Disney Co. officials Tuesday staged an elaborate presentation of their pending deal.

More than 200 people attended a special public forum at Anaheim Convention Center, where officials touted the deal and unveiled a scaled-down model of a renovated Big A that is the centerpiece of the proposed agreement.

“I think this is a fantastic deal for the city of Anaheim,” said Tony Tavares, president of Disney Sports Enterprises. “We’re not spin-doctoring this. We’re just putting the facts out there. “

But at a City Council meeting before Tuesday’s forum, about a dozen speakers criticized the city for tentatively agreeing to spend $30 million of taxpayer money to help pay for a $100-million renovation of the stadium. Disney would pay the other $70 million.

“Why does Disney need so much of the taxpayers’ money to accomplish its goals?” asked the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, who recently formed a group working to block the deal.

“Anaheim is subsidizing one of the wealthiest corporations in America,” added Sheldon, who also is head of the Traditional Values Coalition and a 25-year Anaheim resident.

Bruce Whittaker, a spokesman for another taxpayers’ group, the Committees of Correspondence, said the “deal is clearly a self-inflicted wound of the fiscal kind.”

But others supported the deal.

“I think it’s the best deal in town,” said Jack Lindquist, former president of Disneyland. “If you can keep a major league baseball team for $30 million, you’re never going to run into another buy like that again.”

Allan Hughes, former executive director of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, agreed.

“If you look at it as a business investment for the city, we’ve got one of the best deals going,” he said. “It makes good financial sense.” The entertainment giant is poised to buy 25% of the Angels and take over operations of both the ballclub and the city-owned stadium. The deal would extend the team’s lease at the Big A for at least 23 more years, and they would become the Anaheim Angels in 1997.

The forum, where tempers sometimes flared, was organized by city officials who have faced mounting pressure to gather community reaction before taking a final vote, now expected next Tuesday.

The financial aspects of the pending agreement have been debated intensely in recent months and have led to a deep division among the five-member City Council. Mayor Tom Daly, Frank Feldhaus and Lou Lopez favor deal, but Bob Zemel and Tom Tait oppose it. It requires three votes.

The drawings released Tuesday show a baseball-only stadium with about 45,000 seats, scaled down from the current 67,000 seats. According to the model, the center field seats would be removed, and the Big A scoreboard would be moved back to its old home in the outfield from the parking lot.

“This is all really conceptual,” said Gary Simon, senior development manager with Disney Development Co. “We won’t start a full design effort until there is a final lease agreement with the city. We wanted the public to see the direction that we’re taking.”

Also on Tuesday, Angels owner Gene Autry, 88, released a statement announcing that the baseball organization will conduct a community survey over the next few days to “ensure there is full public awareness of the agreement.”

Autry said the survey would reach “every household in Anaheim” and will ask residents to express either support or opposition to the deal.

“I am hopeful and optimistic that the residents of Anaheim will support the stadium agreement once they know the facts,” Autry said. “I look forward to hearing from them.”

Last week, Sheldon’s group conducted a survey of its own. The group asserts that in the poll of 300 Anaheim residents, respondents overwhelmingly opposed the current deal.

Tuesday’s public forum and the Angels’ survey are in sharp contrast to the style in which a tentative deal was approved last month. Critics said city leaders had tried to railroad the deal through with a minimum of public input.

At that time, talks between the two sides had been kept secret and few details about the deal were known until April 3, when the City Council approved a memorandum of understanding signaling agreement on all major issues. The tentative accord came only three weeks after Disney officially declared the baseball deal dead.