Angels May Have Say in Anaheim Development

If the NFL spurns Anaheim, the city could be faced with a curious dilemma: Get the Angels to approve a development plan at a time the city is suing the team, or sell prime real estate at perhaps one-third of its potential value.

The day after City Councilman Harry Sidhu interrupted a news conference to ask why the city should consider donating part of a 35-acre site to the NFL when the parcel could fetch $150 million from developers, Anaheim officials confirmed that housing could not be built without permission from the Angels.

“We’d need the help of Arte Moreno to do that,” Sidhu said Wednesday.

Despite the political turbulence, Anaheim is still viewed as a serious contender by the NFL and representatives of the other three competing stadium sites, who downplayed the potential effect of Sidhu’s remarks. The league is expected to narrow the field made up of the Coliseum, Rose Bowl, Carson and Anaheim, or perhaps even select a winning proposal, at its May 24-25 meetings in Washington.

The Anaheim site is worth $4 million to $5 million per acre if high-density housing can be built there, said Louis Tomaselli, senior vice president at Voit Commercial Brokerage in Anaheim. The land currently is designated for office use, he said, and thus valued at $1.1 million to $1.7 million per acre, or $38.5 million to $59.5 million.

Under the Angels’ 1996 lease, the city controls that chunk of the Angel Stadium parking lot, but the property uses are limited to a football stadium, hotel, offices, shops, restaurants, entertainment and exhibition facilities, and a youth sports center.

The Angels would have to approve a lease amendment before housing could be built there, Anaheim Planning Director Sheri Vander Dussen said. The city has sued the team, claiming it has violated the lease by changing its name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

For now, Vander Dussen said, developers interested in housing construction are being told to wait until the NFL decides whether to come to Anaheim. Vander Dussen and Angel spokesman Tim Mead said the city and team have not discussed a lease amendment.

Councilwoman Lorri Galloway said the council is not interested in a settlement in which the Angels would approve an amendment in exchange for the right to call themselves by the “Los Angeles” name.

“They’re completely separate issues,” she said. The Angels had no comment on that scenario.

Without the NFL, and without the Angels’ approval, Sidhu said he believed that the land could be sold for $100 million to $120 million and that he would not trade the team name for the Angels’ permission to build housing on the site.

Investment banker John Moag, helping lead the effort to bring an NFL team to Pasadena, said backers of the Anaheim concept are merely going through political growing pains that the Rose Bowl and Coliseum have endured for years.

“That doesn’t mean they’re not going to produce something of substance that the competing sites are going to have to take seriously,” Moag said.

Because the Coliseum and Rose Bowl plans center on existing stadiums, they do not face the same land issues as the Anaheim and Carson concepts.

“We’re a football stadium today, we’ll be a football stadium tomorrow, with or without the NFL,” said Pat Lynch, general manager of the Coliseum. “There will never be high-density housing, a strip mall, or anything else on this site in place of a stadium.”

Coliseum Commission member Bernard Parks, an L.A. City Councilman, noted that the stadium has a certified environmental impact report, designs approved by the league and the support of city government, and is in negotiations with the NFL that “have narrowed down to just a few items.”

“When you look at that in comparison to other locations, it gives me the feeling that we are in the front-running seat,” Parks said.

Another plus for the Coliseum is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in favor of an NFL stadium being on public land.

Neil Glat, the NFL executive in charge of analyzing the four competing stadium sites, said the league has studied the pros and cons of each of the sites and is unlikely to be swayed by the comments of Sidhu, the Anaheim councilman.

“I don’t think anything has changed,” Glat said. “We expect all of the sites to have to work through their processes. That’s not news to us.”

One NFL owner keeping tabs on the Southern California stadium derby is Tom Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints. His attorney told a Texas newspaper this week that Benson is considering relocating the team after the 2005 season. Benson recently broke off negotiations with Louisiana over how much money the state should contribute each year to keep the franchise in New Orleans.

“Tom has many alternatives when it comes to the Saints, and he has received many different offers, including one from Los Angeles,” attorney Stanley Rosenberg said in the San Antonio Express-News.

Times staff writer Dave McKibben contributed to this report.