Business, Labor Leaders Join in Supporting Bill for Port Disney

In what appears to be an emerging bloc of support for the mammoth Port Disney project, local business and union leaders took a stand last week in favor of a Senate bill that would enable the Walt Disney Co. to build the controversial $2.8-billion resort on the Long Beach shoreline.

Environmentalists are bitterly opposed to the bill, which they say would weaken the California Coastal Act and set a dangerous precedent for rampant development along the California coastline.

But area labor leaders, entrepreneurs and teachers said at a press conference last week that to defeat the legislation is to defeat a project that could bring educational opportunities to area students and millions of dollars in economic benefits to local entrepreneurs.

“This would be far greater than having oil tankers parked out there,” Lloyd Ikerd, president of the newly formed Friends of Port Disney, said. “I would rather clean up after a little kid’s popcorn spill than an oil tanker spill.”

The supporters--which included the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, the Long Beach Unified School District, the Hispanic Apartment Managers Assn. and the United Industrial Workers Union--directed their message to the state Legislature, where SB 1062 is currently stalled in the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee.

“This could bring more than $1 billion in new economic activity . . . and a shot in the arm for the small-business owner,” said Louis Pinel, board member of the Latino Entrepreneurial Assn.

Disney says the project is dead without passage of the bill, which would enable the company to fill in 250 acres of ocean on which to build DisneySea, a giant amusement park with the world’s largest aquarium.

The Coastal Act currently prohibits filling in the ocean for recreational use. Some of the nation’s most powerful environmental groups say the special-interest legislation would help Disney profit at the coastline’s expense.

The bill hit troubled waters last week when two state senators accused the Walt Disney Co. of reneging on a deal to table the measure until next year.

Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose) and Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) said Disney officials promised to hold off on the bill until January. Then, without informing lawmakers, Disney submitted amendments in time for a June 25 committee hearing, the senators said.

Calling the Disney company arrogant, the senators abruptly cancelled the hearing, effectively cutting Disney off at the pass.

Negotiations between Disney officials and lawmakers had already reached an impasse earlier this month when committee members suggested that Disney restore three acres of wetlands for every acre of oceanfront it fills. They also sought to require Disney to spend $75 million on environmental “mitigation” to make up for the damage the project would cause.

Disney refused. In its most recent batch of amendments, the entertainment giant offered to pay only $40.5 million for mitigation measures, with the city of Long Beach kicking in $12 million, officials said.

“Having read that (Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael) Eisner’s salary last year was $11.2 million, it seems to me a little payroll deduction for a short period ought to take care of everything,” said Mel Nutter, former chairman of the state Coastal Commission and a local environmentalist who opposes the bill.

Disney also refused the committee members’ requests that it guarantee racial diversity in hiring at the resort and offer discount rates to students who use the park, which has been touted as a marine research facility.

Although Disney has yet to commit to building the resort in Long Beach, its highest-level executives are working hard behind the scenes to win support for the bill.

Eisner, Walt Disney Co. President Frank Wells and Roy Disney, vice chairman of the board, hosted a luncheon last week at their Burbank headquarters for members of the American Oceans Campaign, including actor Ted Danson and attorney Robert H. Sulnick.

Sulnick said little was accomplished, however, with environmentalists urging Disney to build its park on existing land and the entertaiment giant insisting that it could do it only on the ocean.

“What Disney fails to understand is that in the history of the Coastal Act there has never been an amendment that would attack, alter or decrease the preservation of marine habitat,” Sulnick said. “Disney wants to be the first.”

Although the legislation is steering a rocky course in Sacramento, it continued to pick up steam in Long Beach, where more than 20 community groups have now endorsed it.

PORT DISNEY: Business and labor leaders have joined to endorse legislation that would facilitate the Walt Disney Co.’s efforts to build a $2.8-billion theme park on the coast of Long Beach, in what appears to be growing support for the controversial development.