Big-A Project Causes Season-Seat Shuffle

Some Angel season-ticket holders discovered their destiny in the mail this week, when they received 1997 order forms and learned their seat locations will be changed because of renovations to Anaheim Stadium.

Some of the Angels’ 13,000 season-ticket holders are being shuffled around as the stadium shrinks 50% to 33,000 capacity for the 1997 season during a $100-million renovation project. Capacity will increase to 45,000 for the 1998 season, when the project is expected to be completed.

Angel officials are still in the process of planning relocation and other options for many seat locations. An Angel-sponsored focus group this week asked some fans for their reaction to a proposed package deal for the 1998 season that would cost $59 per ticket for a field-level seat and would include food and parking.

Bill Robertson, spokesman for Anaheim Sports Inc., the Walt Disney Co. subsidiary that runs the team, stressed that nothing regarding season tickets for 1998 has been decided. Robertson said the focus group, facilitated by Fieldworks, Inc., was simply a way for the Angels to get fan feedback.

“We discussed so many different topics and we have not even reached any conclusions on our ticketing policies for 1998,” Robertson said.

For the upcoming season, Robertson would not say how many season-ticket holders will be affected by the construction or how the organization determined which fans would move where.

“There are a lot of variables that are mixed in,” he said. “We’re trying to be as fair as possible and trying to inconvenience as few fans as possible.”

Robertson said the Angels will communicate with fans about the process through the mail, in person and through a hotline number, (714) 634-2000.

However none of these lines of communication satisfied Al Genovese, who has had Angel season tickets since 1966, the team’s first season in Anaheim.

Genovese has had four field-level seats at the edge of the visiting team’s dugout near the on-deck circle.

When he received his order form in the mail this week, he discovered his seats were no longer on an aisle and they were split between two rows.

Genovese, who owns Ristorante Genovese in Orange, is 71 and often takes elderly people to games.

“We like to have the aisle seats so we can freely move,” he said.

After calling the hotline twice and getting no satisfaction, Genovese went to the stadium on Wednesday to complain.

“I said, ‘Can’t you put them all together?’ They, said, ‘We go by priority.’ I said, ‘I’ve been here since Day 1,’ and they said, ‘So have a lot of other people,’ ” he said. “[The Angel representative] was very nice, but they weren’t going to do anything.”

Genovese said he was told the only way he could get four seats in the same row is if he moved to a spot near the left-field foul pole. The first deadline for purchasing season tickets is Jan. 7. Genovese said he probably will order the tickets in the split rows.

Robertson said fans might be able to return to their old seats once the renovation project is complete.

“The bottom line is we are reconstructing our stadium and trying to make it a better ballpark,” Robertson said. “We understand that some fans will be inconvenienced by having their seats moved, but what we’re hoping is that this will be in their best interest for long-term happiness.”

Chuck Poss of Huntington Beach, whose family business has owned four field-level tickets since about 1972, saw one possible future and didn’t like it.

Poss said he participated in a focus group on Monday in which he was asked to give his opinion on a proposed ticket package that would include food from a terrace-level restaurant and parking.

“The response of the people [in the focus group] was, ‘Hey, we come to watch baseball and if we want to get food, we’ll go get our food. We don’t necessarily want all this big, gourmet fancy stuff,’ ” Poss said.

Poss pays $14.50 for seats on the third-base side. Under the proposal he saw, the cost would jump to $59 per seat for the 1998 season.

“I just think it would be a waste of money,” he said.