This was first reported back on the weekend, but now it’s official: The city of Anaheim’s dispute with the state of California over selling Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno half a billion dollars’ worth of land under and around his stadium without offering it up to affordable housing developers first has been resolved, with Moreno effectively agreeing to pay the city’s $96 million fine, which will go into a fund for affordable housing.
Sort of, anyway. The actual mechanics of the deal are a bit more complex: Moreno, you’ll recall, was getting his $500 million worth of land at a $350 million discount, including $175 million off the land value off the top, plus another $46 million in exchange for building public parks and $123 million for building affordable housing. Now Moreno will take $96 million of that latter pool of money and give it to the state as payment for Anaheim’s violation of the Surplus Land Act when it agree to sell him the land in a no-bid deal — and the state will then turn around and give it to Anaheim, which will have to use it to build affordable housing.
On the surface, this is a pretty lame “fine”: Anaheim gave Moreno a $123 million rebate on his purchase price in exchange for him promising to build affordable housing, and now the penalty for this sweetheart deal is … Moreno has to build affordable housing with it? The advantage, if there is one, is that now the city will control the housing spending instead of Moreno — and maybe can use the full amount to pay housing developers for the cost of reducing rents at their properties, instead of covering half the entire construction cost, as was allowed under the initial deal. But still, this looks like a have-your-subsidy-and-eat-it-too penalty, not really costing Moreno anything more; and even if you do now count the housing fine as a genuine increase to the Angels owner’s costs, Anaheim is still only getting about $250 million in exchange for land worth $500 million.
Since the other lawsuit against the Angels deal was dismissed last month, this means the redevelopment of the Angels stadium site, including a possible new or renovated stadium, can now move forward. Which means, and I know you’ll all be excited about this, that Cab-Hailing Purse Woman will get her foam finger, and also will be joined by her new friend Cab-Hailing Purse Dude. And truly, who can put a price on that?
A real “oh please, punish me *again*” outcome for Moreno — the value of his project goes up, now that he’s been given permission to remove the low-income units from it (and the ludicrousness of the megabuck$ credit for that ‘showplace’ park is further underscored — as ‘under parked’, low-income people are moved farther away from it, it becomes even more of a playplace for drunken adults on their way to/from events at the stadium).