Lack of Funding Stalls Mall Development Near Disneyland
A proposal to build a $500-million shopping, entertainment and lodging zone on a rundown site across from Disneyland has stalled for lack of funds.
Developers say they are still aggressively seeking financing for Pointe Anaheim, an L-shaped entertainment mall with 1,050 hotel rooms and Las Vegas- and Broadway-style shows along Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue.
But they also acknowledge that many potential investors have turned down the project or refused to commit funds until they can gauge the success of a new Walt Disney Co. theme park that opens next year beside Disneyland.
“They almost want to see how the race runs before they place their bet,” Pointe Anaheim project manager Robert Shelton said Friday, adding that he remains “optimistic long-term.”
He and outside sources said the biggest problem is financing the entire project, which includes three hotels, all at once, as required by a development deal worked out with the city. “One hotel at a time would have been a lot easier,” said a financial source familiar with the proposal.
Hopes had been high for Pointe Anaheim among tourism and city officials as well as its private backers. It had been projected to generate $400 million in taxes to the city over 30 years and help Anaheim emerge from Disney’s formidable shadow. It also is an important part of the tourist industry’s efforts to market Orange County as a vacation spot with multiple attractions.
The project was spotlighted in city brochures and presentations as an example of what’s to come at the Anaheim Resort Area, now a mishmash of motels, T-shirt shops and fast-food joints around Disneyland.
Anaheim has spent heavily to create a zone of leafy walkways where, city leaders hope, new attractions, hotels, restaurants and shops will spring up to complement Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center.
Having Pointe Anaheim in the brochures was “a little premature,” Mayor Tom Daly said this week, noting that no one from the project has applied for a $30-million loan promised by the city.
Pointe Anaheim’s backers, who initially had hoped to open the complex this year, say it will take two or three years to build after they arrange financing. So under any circumstances, it would be completed long after Disney opens its new complex and Anaheim completes a major renovation of its Convention Center and the streets, landscaping and utilities in the area. Those projects, costing about $2 billion in all, are expected to be completed by early next year.
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Times correspondent Judy Silber contributed to this report.
