OC Register Has It Wrong

Today's OC Register's editorial on the Anaheim Resort District fight boils down to "a pox on both your houses," with an extra-heavy helping of pox tossed at SunCal.

But the Register seems to have bought into the Resort District mythology created by the myth-makers at Disney, and the editorial paints an inaccurate picture.

For example:

"Disney made good on its promise to build a second theme park, California Adventure, along with Downtown Disney and the Grand Californian Hotel."

But Disney didn't promise Anaheim city government and affected property owners California Adventure. Disney promised the far-more ambitious WestCOT.

Disney asked the city to foot the bill for hundreds of millions in infrastructure (including building an enormous parking structure for Disney), and wanted nearby property owners to accept caps on the number of hotel rooms they could build on their properties -- where no such caps previously existed (Only the owner of the Hotel Circle property wised up to what was going on and lobbied to be exempted from the hotel room caps down-zoning).

In return, Disney promised (among other things) to build WestCOT -- an improved, West Coast version of their Orlando theme park and a far more ambitious project than California Adventure. Disney promised WestCOT would catalyze the building of 8,000 hotel rooms.

At the same time, Disney was talking to the City of Long Beach about building a "Disney Seas" theme park there. Disney was playing Anaheim and Long beach off each other in order to secure the best taxpayer-funded package.

The Resort District was formed in 1994. Disney canceled WestCOT in 1995 and substituted in the California Adventure park -- so it's disingenuous for Disney to now be screaming, "Hey -- a deal is a deal!"

California Adventure has never lived up to attendance -- and thus tax revenue generating -- predictions. And it would just be an example of a business venture that didn't go as planned, except the City of Anaheim didn't spent hundreds of millions on infrastructure for Disney and nearby property owners didn't accepted limitations on their property uses because Disney promised to build California Adventure.

Disney sold the Resort District on the promise of WestCOT -- and a year later renegotiated it's end of the bargain. Too bad they aren't so liberal when it comes to a modest revision of uses on outlying areas of the Resort District.

The register continues:

The new zoning was an "up-zone" – i.e., existing owners did not lose any value, but instead were given additional development rights for their properties, with existing uses grandfathered in – and the area remains the city's prime economic generator.

Actually, property owners accepted caps on the number of hotel rooms they could build. Since there previously no such caps existed, this was a "down-zoning" accepted on the basis of Disney promises that Disney didn't keep.

The Register continues:

Meanwhile, Disney views the approval of the project as something that would undermine the entire Resort Area concept. Councilman Harry Sidhu, an opponent of the SunCal plan, told us that if he approves the change on one property, then he would have to approve it for any property.

The OC Register failed to note that Councilman Sidhu voted for changing the zoning on the SunCal-optioned lot before he voted against it. Last year Sidhu supported amending the Resort District to allow new residential construction. This year, he suddenly opposes it -- even though none of the underlying facts have changed. This year, Sidhu also announced he's running for the state Senate.

The Register continues:

Then the City Council deadlocked 2-2 on the matter, after Disney attorneys argued that one councilmember had a conflict of interest in voting on the project.

That's one way of putting it.

A more accurate description is Disney waited until a few minutes before the February council meeting to intimidate Councilwoman Kring with an bogus conflict-of-interest allegation. Disney attorneys waited until after the Fair Political Practices Commission hotline  -- set up for such purposes -- had closed for the day, preventing Kring from calling to clarify the matter.

Voting when a conflict-of-interest exists entails serious legal penalties, so Kring was forced to exercise caution and recuse herself from the vote -- and then spend a significant amount of her own money in legal fees to clarify the matter. It was a gross exercise in political intimidation.

More to come...