ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : The Billion-Dollar Misunderstanding

Anaheim has been synonymous with Disneyland, the great American theme park that made possible the arrival of professional sports franchises and grand civic pride. But tight budgets and a recession have changed some of the dynamics of the relationship between a city and its primary tourist attraction.

There has been a lot of posturing in recent months on both sides about how much the city would do to facilitate transportation improvements to serve a second Disney gate. But now, fortunately, in the weeks just before Disney is scheduled to choose between Long Beach and Anaheim for a second Southern California theme park, we seem to be down to an entirely new phase in the negotiations in Anaheim. The hard bargaining has begun, and new fiscal realities are shaping the discussion of what the city can do for Disney.

Nobody is poor on the street of dreams, as the old song goes. The staggering $1-billion figure that city sources say Anaheim was first asked to come up with to finance Disneyland’s ambitious expansion would have been out of the question. While initially calling that figure a “mischaracterization,” a Disney company spokesman did acknowledge recently that a broad assemblage of various highway, parking and city traffic improvements needed for Anaheim might well approach that billion-dollar figure.

But while there’s been a good deal of back and forth over who would do what for whom to launch the $3-billion resort, it’s encouraging at the 11th hour to see realistic assessments now being made on both sides. Disney Development Co. Vice President Kerry Hunnewell says that the company recognized that “it’s not really an expectation that the city would fund that amount.” City Councilman Irv Pickler says: “We don’t have a billion dollars. They know that.”

Anaheim, which has had so many ambitious plans for its future, has out of necessity taken stock of the bottom line. Earlier this year, the City Council approved deep program cuts. The city now has hired a second outside law firm to join its negotiating team with Disney and is said to be looking for a variety of low-cost financing alternatives, including special tax assessment districts and the sale of revenue bonds to assist in the project.

In recent years much of Anaheim’s rhetoric about things to come clearly has been overstated. The full-court press for a new indoor arena, and the talk of vast transportation system improvements, have given way to hard economic choices. Now that the posturing has ended, it’s good to see that the real hard bargaining has begun.