Did the Mouse Put a Stop to the House?

Scratch the Irvine Spectrum Center as a site for House of Blues, which had talked about opening a restaurant and nightclub there this year.

House of Blues said last March it planned to expand into Orange County. Its director of development, Jeff Lapin, said the site would be the Irvine Co.’s entertainment-oriented mall at the Spectrum this year--or somewhere else later.

It will apparently be somewhere else later. “The Spectrum site is not going to be pursued,” spokesman Albert Agbayani said this week from House of Blues’ headquarters in West Hollywood.

Agbayani said he had no information on where the Orange County site would be. Lapin was in Chicago working on House of Blues expansion plans there and didn’t return phone calls.

Other informed sources said the Spectrum House was done in by the Mouse--the Walt Disney Co., that is. Disney owns 11% of House of Blues and can veto any new House of Blues facility near its own locations. In this case, it was unwilling to go along with a site so close to its own theme park and athletic venues in Anaheim.

E. Scott Reckard covers tourism for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7407 and at scott.reckard@latimes.com