Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/arte-moreno/)
The Angels, along with sports teams across the country, are given too much of the revenue sports stadiums generate and taxpayers fail to reap benefits because cities don’t negotiate hard enough, according to experts.
Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu is proposing this Tuesday to let the Los Angeles Angels out of a bad move this past November when owner Arte Moreno opted out of his stadium lease with nowhere to go. As a result, by this October, taxpayers will be sitting on a $1 billion asset with no restrictions on developing the 150-acre parking lot area around the stadium. Yet a proposal this Tuesday before the Anaheim city council would erase that potential and lock taxpayers into another lopsided, long-term negotiation with the Angels – who are probably leaving for Los Angeles anyway as their recent controversial renaming clearly implies.
The Angels, Anaheim’s baseball team may be looking to leave, but the city’s hockey team, the Anaheim Ducks, are negotiating a new 25-year lease and development project around the Honda Center.
The baseball team’s representatives filed an appeal Wednesday challenging the Anaheim Planning Commission’s approval of a $450 million mixed-used development that would compete with the team’s development plans.
Just as the Angels re-open talks with the city to renew their stadium lease, team officials are opposing a proposed $500 million mixed-use project in the Platinum Triangle next to the stadium, saying it would quash their own development plans.
James Ruth, the Anaheim city manager who negotiated the last major Angel Stadium lease deal, has issues with team owner Arte Moreno’s hardball tactics.
Wylie Aitken will replace Charles Black, a controversial figure who clashed with the city’s mayor, as a lead negotiator on a new stadium lease deal with the Angels baseball team.
Mayor Tom Tait is proposing that local Democratic powerbroker Wylie Aitken replace San Diego-based developer Charles Black as the city’s outside consultant in revived talks on a new Angel Stadium lease.
The newspaper published an attack ad with an unflattering picture of Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait after rejecting a similar ad that featured a photo of Kris Murray, the mayor’s chief opponent on City Council.
The rhetoric to keep the Angels in Anaheim – or woo them to Tustin – is ratcheting up.