Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno declared on Friday that talks to have the city of Anaheim give him land valued at somewhere between $30 million and $380 million in exchange for not exercising an opt-out clause were “at a stalemate” and that “we haven’t crossed that line yet” of shopping for a new home. Then the next day, a team spokesperson revealed that Moreno had earlier in the week met with officials from the city of Tustin about building a new stadium there:
“We did have an initial meeting with Tustin,” said Marie Garvey, a consultant retained by the Angels to handle stadium negotiation issues. “We’re still in discussions with the City of Anaheim, but we have to take a long-term view and explore all of our options to insure we have certainty for the future.”
So, for those of us not familiar with SoCal geography, what the heck is a Tustin? It’s another Orange County suburb about five miles down Interstate 5 from the Angels’ current home, and Cuba Gooding Jr. grew up there, and, um, that’s about it. Tustin also has a decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station that’s being targeted for redevelopment, and which is so massive (1,600 acres) that it shouldn’t have trouble finding room for a new stadium.
Where Moreno would come up with the money to actually build a stadium in Tustin is another story — would he want free development land there, too? — but that’s not the point of these kinds of meetings, which Garvey described as being “in the infancy stage.” It’s about creating leverage. Now to see if Moreno can get a bunch of Angels fans to show up at the next Anaheim city council meeting with “Don’t make us drive five more minutes to the game!” placards.
Tustin is a more convenient drive from most of the rich areas of Orange County. To my knowledge it’s mostly residential, though. I don’t know what the city would get out of building a stadium. Maybe Arte would build and Tustin would just give land & tax kickbacks?
Maybe those placards could proclaim “Hell NO! We won’t err – stay?”
About the only thing Tustin might get out of this would be publicity that doesn’t involve the staff and crew of Storage Wars being disgusted that they have to go there to film an episode…
Hands up anyone not from the LA basin who knew where Tustin was before this article?
I knew where Tustin was located!
I’ve lived in metro LA for a couple of years and don’t think I had ever heard of Tustin before today but I lived in Agoura which is on the other side of the sprawling metroplex.
Where’s Wrigley Field when you need it? Wrigley was actually a cool ballpark in its day and maybe Autry should’ve tried to figured out how to stick it out there until the Big A was built instead of being O’Malley’s tenant farmer at Dodger Stadium, although the neighborhood around Wrigley was getting pretty rough by then.