With a vote that will largely cement the deal to sell the Angel Stadium property set for Tuesday, Sept. 29, a former Anaheim mayor made a last-ditch effort to persuade city leaders to reconsider.
In a Sunday letter to Mayor Harry Sidhu and the City Council, Assemblyman Tom Daly (who was mayor from 1992 to 2002) urged them to reconsider the $320 million deal and “avoid the embarrassment and lawsuits that are sure to follow this one-sided deal.”
The City Council in December approved the framework for the sale – negotiated by Sidhu and city management – that will transfer ownership of the 150-acre stadium property to SRB Management, Angels owner Arte Moreno’s business partnership.
The city will receive $150 million of the $320 million purchase price in cash, the remainder will be credited to SRB in exchange for building at the city’s request a 7-acre “flagship” park and 466 units of affordable housing. City leaders have also asked SRB to work out a labor agreement to encourage hiring area residents and veterans; city spokesman Mike Lyster has said the city won’t pay anything for those guarantees.
SRB Management’s plans for developing the property include 5,175 apartments, two hotels, plus restaurants, shops, offices and smaller green spaces in addition to the 7-acre park.
Moreno has not announced whether he’ll renovate the 1966 stadium or build a new one, but there is space set aside for it. The city will be out of the stadium-maintenance business.
Daly isn’t the first to suggest the city is selling the stadium land for too low of a price. City leaders have rejected the criticism, saying a third-party appraisal shows it’s getting fair market value, and noted that seeking other bids would mean the baseball team might leave, something leaders wanted to prevent.
“We as a city have to look to maximize the value of land for the residents, and this stands to bring development much sooner, which in turn will bring new revenue that we will use to serve our residents,” Lyster said.
Fair price?
On Monday, former mayor Curt Pringle (he held office from 2002 to 2010) said the suggestion the city struck a deal that leaves taxpayers’ money on the table is taking things “out of perspective.”
When Anaheim initially bought the property and then built the baseball stadium in 1966, “they didn’t buy it to be land speculators, they really bought it to be an economic engine,” Pringle said.
And in the early 2000s, when the city approved a master plan for the larger Platinum Triangle area that included zoning for homes, offices and shops on the stadium parking lots, Pringle said the goal was to bring development that would pay for future upkeep and upgrades at the stadium. (Under the current lease with Angels Baseball, city maintenance costs have eaten away most of Anaheim’s cut of stadium revenue, a 2019 analysis showed.)
Former mayor Tom Tait (who served from 2010 to 2018) agreed with Daly that the proposed sale undervalues the land, but he also pointed to Sidhu’s own comments around 2005, when Sidhu was a councilman and opposed plans to sell 51 acres of Angel Stadium parking lots to the NFL for $53 million.
“Harry jumped out in the middle of the press conference and said that land’s worth at least $150 million,” Tait said.
The city did ask for additional bids and got one from a developer offering nearly $200 million for the 51-acre parcel. The idea of a NFL stadium ultimately died off.
In a text message responding to questions Monday, Sidhu wrote, “Those are not comparable proposals.”
He said in this case, “the bottom line is that our city – under the previous mayor and council – ordered an appraisal. We got a higher purchase price than the appraisal stated.”
Timing questioned
Tait also took issue with how the city crafted the deal and the fact that officials are moving forward even though council business is still conducted by conference call, and while residents can only address agenda items via emails that are not read aloud at the meetings.
City leaders are lobbying the state to allow Disneyland to reopen, but they won’t open public meetings to the public, he said.
“Why would you sell the city’s largest asset during the middle of a pandemic when your council meetings are done by phone?” Tait said. “If it was a good deal you wouldn’t have to sneak it through during COVID.”
In April, after city halls across the state were closed due to the pandemic, Sidhu wrote in a statement to a reporter, “We are putting off considering major, non-emergency items until we can safely and responsibly do so before the public.”
On Monday, he wrote in a text message that “no one back in March and April knew that we would be closed this long due to coronavirus. After some point, we have to move our city forward as best as we can while still adhering to safety protocols.”
Councilman Trevor O’Neil said the council has been discussing the stadium sale “for over a year and a half,” including at about 30 meetings and five public townhalls.
“We’re actually hearing from more people doing it this way,” he said.
The council voted on the framework of the deal in December; the details of the cash price and community benefits were made public in early September. There have been three townhalls this month, they were online and residents were invited to submit questions.
Lyster said people have been able to comment throughout the process, including up through 2:30 p.m. for Tuesday’s meeting at publiccomment@anaheim.net.
O’Neil said among residents he’s heard from personally, “they want to make sure that the team stays in Anaheim, and as I see it now, this deal accomplishes that.” The council decision Tuesday will include a commitment agreement that binds the team to play locally through at least 2050.
In October 2018, the Angels exercised an opt-out clause in their lease with the city (they would otherwise have been locked in through 2029). Negotiations had stalled during Tait’s tenure, but the team’s move to end the lease kicked off fresh discussions with the newly elected Sidhu, who vowed the keep the team in town.
But Tait scoffed at the idea that the Angels would have left without the stadium sale deal.
“Why would anyone want to move a baseball team from that location in the heart of Southern California” near the confluence of three freeways, he said. “Where would they go?”
Overtures to the Angels by Long Beach in early 2019 never picked up much steam and fizzled out after a few months.
Pringle noted the alternative to the current stadium sale proposal would likely be nearly another decade of the status quo, with the city making a meager return on the property.
“I don’t hear those critics say let’s run the existing lease” to the end of its term, he said, adding that the deal to be voted on Tuesday allows the property to be developed, bringing millions in revenue in coming years.
The city estimates it will net $652 million through 2050, when the development would be fully built out, and about $38 million a year after that.
The land might have been freed for development before 2020, if the city had let the team’s decision to opt out stand. But in early 2019, the City Council voted to reinstate the old lease, keeping the Angels in the stadium until 2029 unless a new deal was negotiated earlier.
With the council expected to seal the deal Tuesday, SRB Management has already paid the city $5 million, with another $45 million potentially coming in this fall, $20 million more possibly by late 2021, and the remaining $80 million in four equal payments in subsequent years.
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