Anaheim officials may soon strike a deal with Disney to sell three public streets, including Magic Way, as questions pop up about who actually uses the road – local residents trying to dodge traffic or visitors headed to the park.
It comes as some residents pushback against the privatization of Magic Way, a public road they say they use to maneuver and cut through traffic, as the multi-billion entertainment juggernaut looks to move ahead with Disneyland Forward – a plan to expand its iconic theme park.
[Read: What Could Disneyland’s Proposed Expansion Mean For Anaheim Residents?]
Disney says Magic Way – a street that city spokesman Mike Lyster has previously told the Voice of OC is driven on by 10,000 cars a day – is used primarily by Disneyland vistors and workers.
Company representatives say they hired a consultant to look at the movement on the public street in early February.
Residents want the claim that Magic Way is mostly used by Disney visitors properly vetted as well as mitigation measures and traffic impacts studied before the city moves forward with the sale of the public street.
On Tuesday, officials unanimously voted to set a public hearing on April 16 to sell Magic Way – from Walnut to Disneyland Drive, a part of Clementine Street South of Katella that stretches into the Toy Story parking lot and Hotel Way for $40 million.
It’s the same day city officials are expected to take a vote on the expansion of Disneyland right before they consider a decision on selling the streets – an element, city staff say is vital to the project.
At the Feb. 27 meeting, many residents said the street should stay public and accused Disney representatives of presenting a faulty traffic count to the planning commission the night before.
Who Uses Magic Way?
At the Feb. 26 Planning Commission meeting, Disney consultant Joe Haupt said 99% of the people who use Magic Way are headed to Disneyland and that the other two streets they want to buy are “Disneyland driveways” that lead to parking lots.
Haupt said Disney commissioned a traffic count three weeks prior to the meeting to map who is coming and going through Magic Way and if they were turning toward Disneyland or the 5 freeway.
He said they found that less than 100 of 11,153 daily commuters on Magic Way during weekdays were using the street as a cut through and that pedestrians are using the street to jaywalk and get to the resort area.
“30 people – during the busiest hour of the busiest week day — you probably have more speaker cards in your hand than those using Magic Way to cut through,” he told planning commissioners.
According to a slide Haupt presented at the planning commission meeting, the count was conducted between Jan. 31 to Feb. 4 – around the same time an atmospheric storm hit the region.
A host of residents at last Monday’s planning commission meeting and last Tuesday’s city council meeting pushed back on Haupt’s claims and called on the city to do more studies and research on Magic Way before they move forward.
Resident Randy Lewis questioned the accuracy of the traffic count and said Magic Way is a “vital pressure valve” that lets traffic cut through to the 5 freeway.
“It rained on the morning of February 1 and on the early morning of February 2, does that represent an accurate sampling of traffic patterns?” he said. “It doesn’t meet the basic requirements for integrity or credibility. It just plain looks crooked.”
Resident Georgia Price also lambasted Haupt’s claims at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
“The numbers do not make sense. Again, it’s an illusion that the street isn’t needed,” she said, adding that the information from Haupt differs from what is in a 17,000-page environmental impact report.
“Either their documents are wrong or Joe is wrong. Has anyone in the city actually read the 17,000 pages? Is the city just relying on Disney’s word that everything is in order?”
Resident and longtime watchdog Cynthia Ward told council members that the city should be nowhere near close to discussing the sale of the street.
“All we have is a traffic count from Disney – that has not been made public – we’ve never seen and we have no idea where those numbers came from,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Disney Spokeswoman Jessica Good said in a Friday email response to questions that the count confirmed long-term assumptions about traffic circulation.
“We are confident in this raw data. Traffic was counted by video and the consultant was able to count and track the paths of travel,” she wrote.
City Spokesman Mike Lyster said in a Friday email the traffic count is in line with a city study in 2022 and traffic on the street was small compared to Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue.
“It’s reasonable for the city to look at transferring responsibility and relieving public costs that come with maintaining a road that primarily benefits Disney,” he wrote.
“For Disney visitors and the few commuters using the road as a cut-through, which it was never intended for, this would be a change with alternatives readily available.”
He added that city officials want to hear more about Magic Way in the coming weeks.
One resident at Tuesday’s meeting, Beverly Griggs, spoke in favor of privatizing Magic Way saying the cars did head towards Disneyland and stating it would be safer for pedestrians.
“I have a four year old granddaughter, and every time I take her across the street to Disneyland I feel like I’m playing a game of Whack a Mole,” she said. “Why not let Disney have it for the price of $40 million to Anaheim pockets?”
Officials Move Forward With Public Hearing
Anaheim officials are expected to hold a public hearing in April to hear residents’ opinion on the proposed sale of the three public streets to Disney for $40 million.
One official expressed interest in taking more time to look into and get answers to concerns about traffic.
City Councilman Stephen Faessel said he was concerned that the city is moving too quickly on considering sale of Magic Way and expressed interest to hold a public hearing on it specifically at a separate date after residents spoke against the privatization of the public street.
“We may not know everything publicly that we should before we go into this,” he said. “There’s more discussion about Magic Way than there is almost any other issue having to deal with Disney Forward, at least as far as we can tell from the public.”
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken pushed back on separating the discussion and vote on Magic Way from the other streets Disney is asking the city to sell, saying it could impact the final outcome of the expansion project.
“If we make independent decisions on one street and not the other, it might null and void or render moot our decisions on the project as a whole so I think that we need to be very sensitive,” she said.
Councilwoman Natalie Meeks agreed with Aitken.
Planning Director Ted White said the “the abandonment of Magic Way is intimately entwined with Disneyland Forward” and that if the council had concerns with the public hearing scheduling they could continue the vote on setting a date at another time.
“It would be very difficult at this time to separate out the removal of Magic Way from the rest of the project entitlements – not that it couldn’t be done with some time but it would take a significant amount of effort,” White said.
Ward questioned at Monday’s planning commission meeting how essential privatizing the road would be to the planned expansion of Disney.
“We also haven’t seen any reason why Disney needs the entire street,” she said. “Are they really not going to build this if they don’t get Magic Way?”
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.