Joining Action Downtown

By GREG HERNANDEZ

Oct. 14, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Disneyland unveiled a lineup of high-profile restaurant and entertainment tenants on Wednesday--from a New Orleans-style eatery to Latin and live-music nightclubs--that will anchor Downtown Disney, the shopping and entertainment complex that will link its two Anaheim theme parks.

The amusement park is banking on the new tenants, many of which are new to Orange County, to attract more sophisticated and affluent guests. It is part of a huge effort by Disney to lure more tourists for multi-day visits.

The 300,000-square-foot complex, which is less than half the size of the Mall of Orange, is scheduled to open in 2001, along with Disney’s California Adventure, the company’s second theme park in Anaheim.

But Downtown Disney will be joining an increasingly crowded entertainment-retail market in north Orange County, which has seen the opening of two large centers over the past 18 months. And at least three more such projects, all of them near Disneyland, are planned.

“No one is going to put together a project as unique as Disney, so there will be enough room in the market for [this project],” said Greg Stoffel, an Irvine-based shopping center and entertainment consultant. “They’re not going to get customers to come as frequently as Irvine Spectrum or the Block [at Orange], but they are going to be unique enough to be on the radar screen for the more affluent customers.”

He said that other centers, such as the Century Stadium Promenade in Orange and a proposed project in Garden Grove, are the most likely to suffer from the increased competition.

Several of Downtown Disney’s new tenants expressed confidence in the company’s track record. “I think it’s a very well thought-out collection of concepts that you won’t find in any mall in America,” said Greg Trojan, president and chief executive of House of Blues, which will open its ninth club in the project.

Several details about Downtown Disney have been disclosed over the past year, but Wednesday marked the first time that Disney officials provided an overview of the project.

“Downtown Disney will be a place to escape, indulge and relax,” said Timur Galen, senior vice president and general manager of Walt Disney Imagineering.

The complex will have some of the restaurant industry’s heaviest hitters. Joachim Splichal, chef and owner of the Los Angeles-based Patina Group, which operates Pinot Provence in Costa Mesa, will open an as-yet unnamed Mediterranean eatery with an outdoor wine and tapas bar.

Besides House of Blues, the project will feature a Latin supper club called Y Arriba! Y Arriba! Its investors include former Burger King chief executive Barry Gibbons and the owners of Club Tropigala, a Miami club that offers Las Vegas-style musical revues, two live orchestras and a floor show.

Lean Times for Theme Restaurants

Gibbons said he and his partners have spent more than $10 million to design and open the Anaheim site, which he called the product of “a solid two years’ work. This has got to be one of the top 10 sites on Earth for the next couple of years,” Gibbons said.

Other restaurants include La Brea Bakery of Los Angeles; Naples Ristorante and Pizzeria by Restaurant Associates of New York and Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen from the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group of New Orleans.

Downtown Disney also will be home to the second Rainforest Cafe in Orange County. The first is at South Coast Plaza. Steven Schussler, creator of the Minneapolis-based company, said the Anaheim restaurant will the largest in the 35-unit chain. He said the Anaheim and Costa Mesa locations are far enough apart for them to successfully coexist.

AMC Theatres plans a 12-screen, 3,000-seat complex that will feature stadium seating and could serve as an ideal location for high-profile movie premieres, said Dick Walsh, AMC’s senior vice president of west operations. AMC has a complex at Disney World in Florida and one planned at Tokyo Disneyland.

So far, Disney-owned venues ESPN Zone, a sports-themed restaurant, bar and play center, and World of Disney, a 40,000-square-foot store of Disney merchandise, are the only retail tenants announced. Disney officials said the full lineup of retail tenants will be announced in two to three months.

Disney is pegging part of the project to an industry that has struggled mightily over the past year. Themed restaurants are grappling with how to develop a steady repeat business and overcome perceptions of mediocre food. Rainforest’s year-over-year profits have been down, and its stock is off 18% this year. Planet Hollywood last month filed for bankruptcy reorganization and last week closed its Santa Ana restaurant. And in August, Dave & Buster’s saw its stock plunge 45% in one day after it said quarterly profits would not meet expectations because its three Southern California eateries were underperforming.

Downtown Disney is one of several splashy entertainment and shopping complexes planned for Orange County. Combined, they would add another 3 million square feet of stores, eateries and entertainment venues--the equivalent of another South Coast Plaza--if all are built. The others are Pointe Anaheim across the street from Downtown Disney, the Sportstown Entertainment Complex, also in Anaheim, and Riverwalk in Garden Grove.

Pointe Anaheim would include three hotels, stores, restaurants and a nightclub district with three stages for touring Broadway shows and Las Vegas-style concerts. A 24-screen movie theater could be substituted for the live entertainment.

The point man for Pointe Anaheim--which Disney had initially railed against--said Wednesday that the two projects should be “very complementary.”

“It sounds like a good, strong plan,” Robert H. Shelton said. “I’m eager to see the renderings.”

Competition Will Be All Around

The crown jewel of the Sportstown project, which would be built in the Edison International Field parking lot, is the proposed Gotcha Glacier, a four-story indoor snowboard and surfing complex that would include a skateboarding park and a rock-climbing wall.

Riverwalk--between Buaro Street and Harbor Boulevard, south of Chapman Avenue--would include “neighborhoods” of music with similarly themed restaurants. For example, a section for country-western music would include a restaurant selling Southern-style food.

Downtown Disney’s AMC Theatre also will have plenty of competition, some of it self-inflicted, as the number of movie screens continues to multiply in Orange County, and theater owners are searching for creative ways to lure customers. In neighboring Orange, AMC operates a 30-screen megaplex at the Block and the Century Promenade center includes a 25-screen Century Theaters.

The county’s busiest movie house is the Edwards Spectrum Theater, which has 21 screens with plans to add more.

Theatres Circuit Inc. of Newport Beach, the county’s largest theater operator, plans to boost its total number of movie screens by 25% over the next three years. Its three-screen theater on Bristol Street across from South Coast Plaza is being renovated and will become the first in the county to serve light meals and alcoholic drinks.

Downtown Disney is modeled after a much-larger complex of the same name at Florida’s Walt Disney World. Several major parts of the Florida project currently aren’t part of the Anaheim project, which at 20 acres is much smaller than 120-acre Florida complex. They include Pleasure Island, a cluster of nightclubs and bars with an $18.95 admission fee; a Planet Hollywood restaurant, whose Orlando eatery is the most successful in the struggling chain; Cirque du Soleil, which also has two permanent shows in Las Vegas; and DisneyQuest, a “virtual theme park” building featuring such attractions as roller-coaster and whitewater-raft simulators.

Times staff writers Leslie Earnest and E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report.

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The Menu at Downtown Disney

Tourists will be able to eat in several worlds--from a rain forest to a Hollywood bar--when they visit Downtown Disney in 2001. Tenants include:

Rainforest Cafe (tropical theme)

Y Arriba! Y Arriba! (Latin)

House of Blues (Delta-inspired cuisine)

Naples Ristorante and Pizzeria (Southern Italian)

Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen (New Orleans traditional)

Patina Restaurant (Mediterranean)

La Brea Bakery (breads and pastries)

AMC Megaplex (12 screens)