It’s a Loud, Loud World

As Disneyland and Anaheim embark on the most ambitious make-over of the theme park and its surroundings in 40 years, construction cranes are rivaling the Matterhorn for dominance of the city’s skyline, and officials are racing to keep dust, fumes and jackhammers from driving tourists away.

But with traffic jammed by work along major thoroughfares and by closed freeway ramps, and the city predicting a drop in visitors to Anaheim over the next five years, city and Disney officials worry that their multibillion-dollar building boom may scare tourists away from the Happiest Place on Earth.

“It’s a big risk. It’s going to be a challenge to make it friendly for people to come here,” said Anaheim Councilman Tom Tait. “All it takes is a few people beginning to say that it’s not going to be easy to get in and out of Disneyland to cause a major drop in dollars over the next few years, not just for Anaheim, but for the whole region.”

More than 40 million tourists visit Orange County each year, pumping $5.5 billion into the county’s economy. Anaheim does not maintain statistics on how many tourists visit the city, but urban planning experts say the number is probably over half. In 1996, more than 15 million people visited Disneyland alone.

With the Magic Kingdom looking tired, there is wide agreement that to maintain that economic engine, the city and Disneyland need a face-lift.

But until it’s all over in 2001, there will be asphalt poured, nails driven or dirt moved somewhere in Anaheim virtually every day without letup. The new $1.4-billion Disney theme park, Disney’s California Adventure, is set to break ground on Disneyland’s parking lot in March. A $150-million expansion and renovation of the neighboring Convention Center is due to get underway in August.

Then, too, there is $510 million worth of street, sewer, electrical and telephone cable work the city has started along every major street around Disneyland to accommodate the added service demands of the new theme park.

Nearby, Caltrans and the Orange County Transit Authority are spending $1.1 billion to widen a 10-mile stretch of I-5 from six to 12 lanes. Much of the work will be done this year on a stretch of roadway that not only runs through Anaheim, but delivers millions of visitors to the Convention Center and Disneyland.

Across town, Disney is renovating Anaheim Stadium at a cost of $100 million, and Caltrans and OCTA are spending another $180 million to widen the 91 Freeway.

Combine that with other city projects to remodel its resort area and the rest of Anaheim, and the price tag totals $4.2 billion. It is one of the most intensive urban construction efforts in Southern California history.

With all that in the works, observers who study Orange County development say keeping construction unobtrusive will not be easy.

“It’s clear that the city is doing many of the right things for tourist dollars in the long run. Now, it’s up to the planners and local officials to make sure that there isn’t going to be too great a disruption in the short run,” said Mark Baldassare, professor of urban and regional planning at UC Irvine.

It is no secret to Anaheim officials that their prized tourism industry is likely to suffer during construction.

According to projections done for the city by Los Angeles-based PKF Consulting, the burst of building will make it hard for Anaheim hotels to fill their guest rooms until 2001, when the work ends and the new theme park opens.

This year, PKF predicts that demand for hotel rooms in the city will drop 4.1%, and will decline further in 1998. And while the PKF study predicts that hotels will raise their room rates to maintain revenues, half a dozen Anaheim hoteliers told the Times they have no plans to do so.

Even if room rates go up, it is not until the construction boom is complete that PKF expects renewed vigor in the hotel industry.

If room rates do not rise as PKF predicts, Anaheim could face a shortfall in the revenues it is counting on to pay off the $510 million it borrowed this month to pay for infrastructure improvements associated with the Disney project and the convention center expansion.

The $510 million in bonded indebtedness is to be repaid over the next 40 years from revenues generated by Anaheim’s 15% hotel bed tax, along with increased sales and property taxes the Disney project is expected to generate.

According to the PKF study, Disney predicts that attendance at the theme park may decline over the next several years as families postpone their biennial or triennial trips to coincide with the new park’s opening.

“One of our biggest challenges over the next five years is making sure that guests continue to come to Disneyland and that they don’t find the construction a deterrent,” said Disneyland spokesman Tom Brocato.

City officials compare handling the construction morass to managing traffic snarls after baseball games, and say they plan to be ready for it.

In January, the city hired an engineering firm for $926,000 to choreograph work at the various sites.

Late last year, the city secured $2.5 million in federal, state and private moneys to buy and install a sophisticated traffic management system to synchronize traffic signals on its major streets. A major component of that system, dubbed SCOOT, had its first test Tuesday.

And this month, the city, Disney and the Anaheim Visitors and Convention Bureau hired a public relations firm to put a positive spin on the construction. The contract with Irvine-based Nelson Communications is not final, but city officials say the effort could cost Anaheim several hundred thousand dollars.

Among the things planned to ease visitor woes is a public construction hotline, and possibly hiding construction sites with murals.

City officials say they will announce more specifics soon.

While Disney officials declined to speculate on how construction on the new park will affect visitors to Disneyland, they acknowledge that the Monorail, the train that takes visitors from the theme park to various hotels, will be out of service for long stretches.

Outside the park, Anaheim crews will be refurbishing bordering streets, changing the name of West Street to Disney Way and installing trees, plantings and benches on wider thoroughfares.

“We are really excited about trying to turn all this construction into an attraction,” said Douglas Moreland, vice president of development for the new Disney theme park. “In the 1950s, when Walt Disney built Disneyland, the public never got to experience that. This time, visitors can be part of history. We think they will come to be part of what’s going on.”

Picking her way on a recent day through the mud that has replaced the sidewalk on Harbor Boulevard while construction crews work to sink utility lines underground, Darlene Skinner, 48, didn’t share Moreland’s enthusiasm.

Visiting Disneyland for the first time from Alberta, Canada, Skinner said she has been awakened every day of her stay by jackhammers at 8 a.m. “It’s kind of yucky, to tell you the truth,” Skinner said. “You understand it has to be done, but, well, there’s noise, there’s dust, I guess I didn’t expect it.”

At Anaheim City Hall, officials are unfurling maps of construction sites and listing the problems they face: Where will the thousands of construction workers park? How to make sure too many streets aren’t closed or impassable at once? How to bring in construction materials without stopping traffic?

“We’ve been working on this in earnest for a number of years, so we’re really as ready as we can be,” said Gary Johnson, Anaheim director of public works.

“Our aim is, when people see their driveways filled with dirt, when it gets noisy from drills, that they’ll say, ‘Well, I can take it, because I can see the end of this.’ ”

Times correspondent Deborah Cano contributed to this story.