Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

[DisneyMickey]

Sept. 25: Council seeks initiative on Disney plot

Anaheim City Council asks staff to prepare a ballot measure requiring voter approval of a Disney project.

By SARAH TULLY
The Orange County Register

ANAHEIM - The City Council gave its blessing for a ballot initiative that would give voters say on whether Disney can build a theme park or other project on company-owned property.

Tonight, the council voted 3-2 to ask staff to start paperwork for the ballot measure, requested by a group funded by developer SunCal. The group can avoid collecting signatures to place the item on the ballot if the council sets the election instead.

"I'm looking for something that is fair and right and just," said Councilwoman Lorri Galloway.

Mayor Curt Pringle and Councilman Harry Sidhu opposed the issue.

The initiative is the latest spike in the drawn-out dispute between SunCal, the city and Disney over SunCal's proposal to build 1,500 homes across from the Disney plot in the Anaheim Resort area. Disney says the resort should be reserved for tourism uses, but three council members have sided with SunCal by approving residential zoning for the plot the developer is purchasing.

The council has until March 4 to put the initiative on the June 3 ballot – the same date as a competing referendum spearheaded by Disney. Disney gathered signatures for the referendum, which would overturn the zoning, and a related initiative that would require voter approval of housing developments in the resort. Signatures from the initiative are being counted.

Proponents of the new initiative said voters should have say over Disney property, just as Disney is asking voters to approve housing projects in the resort.

"Give the people the whole story and let the people decide what's best for them," said speaker Martin Lopez, who favors the initiative.

Others disagreed, saying the developer-funded group should collect signatures if they want a ballot measure. Pringle called the initiative "punitive and retaliatory."

"This is nothing but harassment and a vicious attack on Disney," said speaker Stan Pawlowski, who is against the initiative.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/initiative-disney-council-1852185-ballot-signatures

Can you believe this? If I read this right, Anaheim gave the measure approval without any signatures or anything that they required Disney and SOAR to have. Anaheim is really gone too far now.

[JeffYardDog]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

http://www.ocregister.com/news/initi...lot-signatures

Can you believe this? If I read this right, Anaheim gave the measure approval without any signatures or anything that they required Disney and SOAR to have. Anaheim is really gone too far now.

Aww, that's so unfair.

Making Disney play by the same rules that they want for everyone else.

As yee sow and all that ...

[Barbossa]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

They have to remember that if it weren't for Disney and Disneyland, all those hotels and spinoff businesses wouldn't be there today.

[Retrocool]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

The City of Anaheim was there before Disneyland.

If it wasn't for Disneyland, Orange County wouldn't be as crowded and expensive as it is now.

[k_peek_2000]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Anaheim is stupid. They don't know what is best for their city, who says we do an MC Meet at Anaheim's City Hall, I'll bring the eggs .

[dougeebear]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

http://www.ocregister.com/news/initi...lot-signatures

Can you believe this? If I read this right, Anaheim gave the measure approval without any signatures or anything that they required Disney and SOAR to have. Anaheim is really gone too far now.

And that's legal. That's the way government works... the city council can make any number of proposals that the voters ratify. If the citizenry wish to make a proposal, they need to get a petition to qualify it for the ballot.

What has gone "too far" is that this is clearly a retaliatory proposal to Disney's citizen-backed proposition that the council get public approval before making changes to the fair use of the resort district, a fact that somehow keeps getting overlooked. The council and the voters approved the Resort District and, as a result, the area has been beautified over the years. Now the council wants more $$$ so they allow a housing development to line their coffers (public and possibly private) and cover their greed with concern about low income housing.

Disney is simply trying to hold the council to its original agreement, approved by the voters, that the Resort District be used for resort business: hotels, motels, restaurants, shopping, etc. The council, in turn, wants the voters to approve Disney themepark construction (which they already have by virtue of approving the Resort District).

Ah, but there's more greed on the part of the city council. If I recall correctly, the city proposed a parkway or public access tram between the shopping center being built and the Convention Center, a parkway that would (inconveniently for Disney) run straight through the Strawberry Field/Third Gate site. The city will do everything it can to get that property, including declaring imminent domain (although that would go immediately into court and be dragged out for years).

[Retrocool]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Anaheim is stupid. They don't know what is best for their city.

Right, and the Disney Corporation does?

Perhaps Disney could threaten to move Disneyland to some other city if Anaheim doesn't agree to its corporate interests.

[Quacky4Donald]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Right, and the Disney Corporation does?

Perhaps Disney could threaten to move Disneyland to some other city if Anaheim doesn't agree to its corporate interests.

Hey, if they decide to do that I propose Santa Rosa, CA! I'd be Disneylanding it everyday!

As for the topic at hand I'm not very well versed on the issue because I don't live in the area, however, if Disney owns that land then it is my belief that they should be able to do whatever they want with (within a "reasonable" limit of course. Granted "reasonable" is up to each persons' definition.)

...Joe...

[Barbossa]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Perhaps Disney could threaten to move Disneyland to some other city if Anaheim doesn't agree to its corporate interests.

We could use a good theme park in British Columbia.

[JeffYardDog]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Disney is simply trying to hold the council to its original agreement, approved by the voters, that the Resort District be used for resort business: hotels, motels, restaurants, shopping, etc. The council, in turn, wants the voters to approve Disney themepark construction (which they already have by virtue of approving the Resort District).

Disney made all kinds of economic promises associated with the DCA project that would compensate for the public investment and then they didn't invest the money and effort required to fulfill those promises.

So it appears that there is a lack of fulfillment on multiple sides.

The way I see it is that Disney is trying to maximize profit with minimal costs for the benefit of their shareholders and the city is fulfilling obligations to their citizens by not giving away money and rights to a self-serving (not evil) corporation without city participation and compensation.

[techskip]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

I can't seem to find it right now but I know there is an extensive thread on here by DarkBeer that at least attempts to fully define the argument on both sides. I have a feeling this new bit of information will likely be merged into that thread. At the same time DarkBeer mentioned that this very petition may happen and hinted at a resulting lawsuit and charges of corruption if it did. I am curious what the legal reaction to this bit of news will be. Disney has played dirty, Anaheim has played dirty... everyone is pointing a finger at their opponent and it will only heat up as the vote draws closer. This should be interesting.

[The Disneylander]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Hmmm...This is all very interesting.

[Pisces]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

Disney sales tax subsidizes Anaheim's police and fire departments. The schools, city infrastructure etc...

City Council seems to have forgotten who butters their bread.

Anyone remember the bad old days when Harbor Blvd was littered with seedy motels and prostitutes and we were all waiting for City of Anaheim to clean it up ???

It was Disney that cleaned up Harbor Blvd.

[TP2000]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

What's amazing is that in the 12 months since this SunCal fueled saga took off, the housing market in OC has totally collapsed. And the last 90 days of the credit crunch and what it means for the next five+ years of homebuilding has just put a deadbolt on the closing door.

Here's another Anaheim example from a condo developer with much deeper pockets than SunCal:

Lennar just spent tens of millions of dollars prepping the land for Platinum Triangle with sewers, streets, sidewalks, electric/data cabling, etc. in anticipation of building 5,000+ housing units. Lennar was going to build a dozen condo towers between 24 and 35 stories tall on all of these new streets they've created. They've spent three years getting it all ready, and the first units were to begin construction in a few months and the first homeowners were going to move in by 2009.

But now... it's all been stopped. Lennar has announced it has suspended construction on any new housing in Anaheim's Platinum Triangle. Lennar is capping off the new infrastructure, and the streets and blocks and parks will all sit there empty. The market for pricy condo's in OC has evaporated in the last 90 days, and now there is no market for what they are selling. Pundits are saying there won't be anyone living in Lennar's Platinum Triangle development until 2012 at the earliest. Maybe even later.

And SunCal is right in there with them. Who in their right mind would build 1,500 shoebox condo units packed in next to a freeway now? No one is left to buy such a product. And yet SunCal has to stick to its guns for awhile longer lest they lose a whole lot of face. Disneyland will still be in business in 2009, and 2012, and 2020. But where will all these developers be who were fueled on an over-hyped, over-priced, and purely speculative home market built on dodgy lending from now-bankrupt mortgage brokers? Who is SunCal going to sell 1,500 condo units to exactly?

Buh-bye SunCal. And Lennar. And D.R.Horton. And all of the other developers trying to build condo's in Anaheim. Disneyland will still be doing business in Anaheim this year and in the future, but don't let the door hit you on your way out of town. :lol:

[Pisces]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

SunCal's bloated, overblown condo units will in no way bring in the kind of sales tax revenue (fire, police, teachers, hospitals etc...) that Disney's projects routinely provide.

As a matter of fact, SunCal's "housing" will use up far more in City services and drain the infrastructure, than it will be giving back.

SunCal and all these other nonsense developers add nothing, and are a complete drain. They need to be run out of town on a rail! IMHO IMHO IMHO

[DisneyMickey]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

What's amazing is that in the 12 months since this SunCal fueled saga took off, the housing market in OC has totally collapsed. And the last 90 days of the credit crunch and what it means for the next five+ years of homebuilding has just put a deadbolt on the closing door.

Here's another Anaheim example from a condo developer with much deeper pockets than SunCal:

Lennar just spent tens of millions of dollars prepping the land for Platinum Triangle with sewers, streets, sidewalks, electric/data cabling, etc. in anticipation of building 5,000+ housing units. Lennar was going to build a dozen condo towers between 24 and 35 stories tall on all of these new streets they've created. They've spent three years getting it all ready, and the first units were to begin construction in a few months and the first homeowners were going to move in by 2009.

But now... it's all been stopped. Lennar has announced it has suspended construction on any new housing in Anaheim's Platinum Triangle. Lennar is capping off the new infrastructure, and the streets and blocks and parks will all sit there empty. The market for pricy condo's in OC has evaporated in the last 90 days, and now there is no market for what they are selling. Pundits are saying there won't be anyone living in Lennar's Platinum Triangle development until 2012 at the earliest. Maybe even later.

And SunCal is right in there with them. Who in their right mind would build 1,500 shoebox condo units packed in next to a freeway now? No one is left to buy such a product. And yet SunCal has to stick to its guns for awhile longer lest they lose a whole lot of face. Disneyland will still be in business in 2009, and 2012, and 2020. But where will all these developers be who were fueled on an over-hyped, over-priced, and purely speculative home market built on dodgy lending from now-bankrupt mortgage brokers? Who is SunCal going to sell 1,500 condo units to exactly?

Buh-bye SunCal. And Lennar. And D.R.Horton. And all of the other developers trying to build condo's in Anaheim. Disneyland will still be doing business in Anaheim this year and in the future, but don't let the door hit you on your way out of town. :lol:

Interesting post.

[TP2000]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

SunCal's bloated, overblown condo units will in no way bring in the kind of sales tax revenue (fire, police, teachers, hospitals etc...) that Disney's projects routinely provide.

That's just it. There will be no SunCal housing, even if Disney suddenly changed its tune and held a big Welcome To The Resort District SunCal! rally on Harbor Blvd. with Mickey Mouse and the Disneyland Band and the pretty blonde Disneyland Ambassador cutting the ribbon.

The market for housing has dried up in the last 12 months. And the market for $500,000 high rise shoebox condo units next to a 14 lane freeway and some ghetto gangbanger apartments has completely disappeared. Those types of developments, the exact type of thing SunCal was proposing for this unattractive piece of land, could only have been conceived in a housing bubble of unprecedented proportions. The housing bubble has burst. And it will be at least 15 years before we ever get back into that sort of situation again. Buh-bye SunCal.

I'll be fascinated to watch this unfold, and see how SunCal tries to back away from this issue that they created in the first place.

Disneyland will still be in business in Anaheim next year, and many years to come. But now SunCal has to pack up its carpet bag and slink back to the home office in Irvine while it tries to figure out if it goes bankrupt like so many other over-leveraged developers.

[techskip]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

What's amazing is that in the 12 months since this SunCal fueled saga took off, the housing market in OC has totally collapsed. And the last 90 days of the credit crunch and what it means for the next five+ years of homebuilding has just put a deadbolt on the closing door.

Here's another Anaheim example from a condo developer with much deeper pockets than SunCal:

Lennar just spent tens of millions of dollars prepping the land for Platinum Triangle with sewers, streets, sidewalks, electric/data cabling, etc. in anticipation of building 5,000+ housing units. Lennar was going to build a dozen condo towers between 24 and 35 stories tall on all of these new streets they've created. They've spent three years getting it all ready, and the first units were to begin construction in a few months and the first homeowners were going to move in by 2009.

But now... it's all been stopped. Lennar has announced it has suspended construction on any new housing in Anaheim's Platinum Triangle. Lennar is capping off the new infrastructure, and the streets and blocks and parks will all sit there empty. The market for pricy condo's in OC has evaporated in the last 90 days, and now there is no market for what they are selling. Pundits are saying there won't be anyone living in Lennar's Platinum Triangle development until 2012 at the earliest. Maybe even later.

And SunCal is right in there with them. Who in their right mind would build 1,500 shoebox condo units packed in next to a freeway now? No one is left to buy such a product. And yet SunCal has to stick to its guns for awhile longer lest they lose a whole lot of face. Disneyland will still be in business in 2009, and 2012, and 2020. But where will all these developers be who were fueled on an over-hyped, over-priced, and purely speculative home market built on dodgy lending from now-bankrupt mortgage brokers? Who is SunCal going to sell 1,500 condo units to exactly?

Buh-bye SunCal. And Lennar. And D.R.Horton. And all of the other developers trying to build condo's in Anaheim. Disneyland will still be doing business in Anaheim this year and in the future, but don't let the door hit you on your way out of town. :lol:

I would venture to call this being slightly short sighted. At some point there will be another housing crunch and the construction costs will only go up as time goes on. If you build in the slump you are in a position to cash out during a peak, meanwhile your competition is frantically trying to build and it's costing them a fortune. As to SunCal... they are literally right down the street from DL, talk about luxury... this a a realtor's dream.

[TP2000]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

As to SunCal... they are literally right down the street from DL, talk about luxury... this a a realtor's dream.

The piece of land SunCal owns is nowhere near attractive. It's next to 14 lanes of busy Santa Ana Freeway. It's wedged alongside cheap 1970's apartment complexes that have multiple families living in one unit and are home to some of the worst gang problems in Anaheim. There is no surrounding infrastructure to support middle and upper-middle income residents; all of the shopping options nearby are seedy liquor stores or greasy tacquerias.

No one in their right mind would ever buy a unit in the upscale SunCal development, unless it was the middle of an over-hyped housing bubble. Those bubbles come along every 20 years or so, and we just saw the bubble of 2002-06 pop in a big, bad, ugly way that is threatening to drag the entire economy into recession.

Will SunCal really build 1,500 units no one wants and then sit on them for years and years waiting and hoping that another housing bubble comes along? Very, very doubtful.

I would bet two churros that what SunCal's executive team is doing right now is trying to find a face-saving exit strategy from the Anaheim Housing Mess they got themselves into. Disney isn't going to back down, because Disney is already doing business and investing heavily in Anaheim. Disneyland rides through recessions every decade, just as they have since the sharp recession of 1957-58. Disneyland isn't going away. But SunCal can't afford to stick around any more. They are selling a product that no one is buying, especially when the product is where SunCal wanted to put it.

I'll say it again; the next chapter in this Anaheim Housing Mess is going to be the most interesting.

The next chapter is called "The Bubble Bursts and SunCal Leaves Town", and it will be fascinating to watch how they do it and who they blame.

[Mac Daddy]

Re: Anaheim now trying to block a 3rd Theme Park

What's amazing is that in the 12 months since this SunCal fueled saga took off, the housing market in OC has totally collapsed.

Totally Collapsed is a bit strong. I just read last week that the overall market in OC was UP 1% over last year at this time. I agree that there is a slump, but not a collapse. Back in 1991...THAT was a collapse.