Anaheim officials are starting to ponder the future of Angel Stadium even though the Major League team can extend their current lease for the ball club up until 2038 and the city has yet to receive a long awaited assessment of the property’s condition.
[Read: Will Anaheim Finally Know if Angel Stadium is Trashed This Year?]
Still, another land sale could be on the horizon for the stadium years after the last sale imploded in an FBI corruption investigation despite officials repeatedly denying long term talks of the taxpayer asset.
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said she doesn’t believe there is a rush to start plans on the stadium but city government moves slowly.
“My vision for the Angel Stadium lot is to have a master plan on that site, as if the lease was not there,” she said in a phone interview last month.
“Will it include a new ballpark? Maybe, maybe not. How much percentage of that property do we want to have devoted to park space or public uses like youth sports fields and libraries? These are all the things that I want to discuss.”
The rest of the city council did not return requests for comment.
Marie Garvey, a spokeswoman for the Angels, directed questions about Angel Stadium to the city.
“We are focused on the upcoming season so we don’t have any comment,” she said in a Friday email.
It comes on the heels of former City Manager Jim Vanderpool resigning after facing scrutiny over his close ties to the resort interests that were pushing the sale of the stadium, which would later become enveloped in the city’s corruption scandal.
[Read: Anaheim’s City Manager Resigns]
In 2022, FBI affidavits surfaced alleging former Mayor Harry Sidhu – Aitken’s predecessor – tried to ram through the last stadium sale with the expectation of getting $1 million in campaign contributions from the Angels – something he later denied through his attorney.
The federal probe led officials to stop the sale and Sidhu ultimately ended up going to prison last year for lying to federal investigators about the failed stadium sale.
In a phone interview, Aitken said given what happened with the last deal, she wants to make sure public uses are required on the property before they ask state officials for leniency on the Surplus Land Act — a state law pertaining to selling public land which they were accused of violating in the last Angel Stadium deal.
She also said any new negotiation should have professional negotiators at the table representing the city.
“I believe that we have an incredible team, but there are benefits to having outside professional negotiators when you are going up against a billionaire that has no regard for the residents of Anaheim. You can’t bring a pillow to a gunfight,” she said.
Anaheim Eyes Angel Stadium Again
In January, Aitken called for the discussion of a master plan for the stadium site while Councilwoman Natalie Meeks called for a discussion on what their goals are for one of the city’s biggest assets.
Aitken said that she along with Vanderpool, Councilman Ryan Balius and Councilwoman Norma Campos Kurtz went to Sacramento to discuss the Surplus Land Act.
“No commitments made from either side, but we just always want to keep our ear to the ground just on whether we have any changes that might impact,” she said at the Jan. 27 meeting.
“When we have conversations under the surplus land act, we are not allowed to reach out to the Angels, but we are always ready to come up with a plan.”
State officials in 2022 alleged city leaders violated when they tried to sell the stadium, fining the city $96 million, but allowing them to proceed with the sale.
That’s when the FBI let their presence in the city be known and the deal was ultimately canned by a previous city council.
This year, officials including Aitken, Vanderpool, Balius and Kurtz with lobbyists from the Fanslau Government Affairs firm to discuss the Surplus Land Act before being joined by Assemblyman Avelino Valencia to talk about Angel Stadium, according to their January calendars.
A Master Plan
Aitken said the city should have a master plan for the stadium site.
“We’re going to have to make community decisions about what we want to see on that property and we’re going to have to do it with a ton of community input and make sure that we have a ton of community benefits if anything is going to happen on that property,” she said.
Meeks said it is time officials start to collaborate on their vision, priorities, goals and plans for Angel Stadium.
“I would like to ask staff to bring back a framework of how that process could move forward, both with this body in a public fashion, and then the community input piece,” she said at the Jan. 27 meeting.
“I think that will help us move forward with the mayor’s suggestion to come up with some sort of conceptual site plan.”
At the last city council meeting this month, officials said they would be holding meetings in the council districts with residents in part to talk about the future of Angel Stadium.
City Spokesman Mike Lyster said in a January email that they looked forward to council member’s input on the stadium.
“There’s no rush here, and this has been identified by our Council as something to be addressed in our city’s 2024-2034 strategic plan. To be clear, as we have said on multiple occasions, there are no lease or sale discussions at this time,” he wrote.
Officials have repeatedly denied any long term talks of another stadium sale yet top city officials met with Angels executives and real estate consultants to discuss the surplus land act early last year.
Around that same time, officials announced that Angels Baseball extended their lease of Angel Stadium to 2032.
About a month later, state auditors released a report that found the lease severely limits how much revenue Anaheim makes from the public stadium and that its unclear terms have kept city officials from being able to see if the property is properly maintained.
Aitken called the current lease deal with the Angels a “joke.”
“The current lease that the city was tied to by the prior mayor is a joke. We hardly make any money,” she said in a phone interview last month. “I don’t understand why there haven’t been calls to renegotiate the lease.”
“The only time the Angels are winning is when they’re playing against the people of Anaheim.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.