How it started (yesterday):
As for the Angels land deal, that’s now totally up in the air, if not back to square one.
How it’s going (today):
City Council members unanimously voted to immediately kill all proceedings surrounding the stadium deal after over two hours of public comments where residents spoke against the deal and the council members who initially supported it.
And that’s the ballgame. There are still some details to be worked out — Acting Mayor Trevor O’Neil asked that the deal be put on hold rather than killed, to give city lawyers time to work out how to unravel the agreement, but the council was having none of it — but city attorney Rob Fabela said, “I understand the current thinking is finding a voidability and that’s what we will do.”
In the end, even councilmembers who voted for the original stadium land sale, in which the city was to get $150 million for $500 million worth of property, seemed to feel like the whole bit about the now-ex-mayor talking about soliciting a $1 million bribe in exchange for the deal made the entire transaction too toxic to touch. In one telling statement, councilmember Stephen Faessel said, “If we do a do over, make it in 2025 when all of us, or most of us will be gone. This needs a fresh start by fresh faces.”
The ball is now extremely in Los Angels Angels owner Arte Moreno’s court, though with a lease that runs through 2029, he may need to wait a while regardless before saber-rattling about moving anyplace else in Southern California. (Not that he has other places in Southern California offering him stadium deals, but that never stopped him before.) If he’s smart, which is decidedly an open question, he’ll let everything cool down for a while before starting over with a new mayor and maybe new councilmembers, and hoping he can still sell “But that old mayor who was forced to resign agreed to extend my exclusive control over development of the stadium property, you can’t build anything without me bwahahaha!” Or, you know, maybe he’ll just decide to offer fair market value for the land, as all he would do with $350 million is to sign three crappy free agent outfielders. Anything is possible! Not likely, but possible!
LOL it rises: https://www.ocregister.com/2022/05/25/with-anaheim-stadium-deal-dead-long-beach-ready-to-talk-anew-to-angels-about-coastal-baseball-park/
This is such a stupid idea on it’s face that I can scarcely believe someone said it out loud. 13 acres, no place for additional parking, forcing folks to go 405/710 to games (when LBC can’t even manage the port traffic as it is), and somehow thinking all those existing building owners will be totally cool with the stadium blocking their views and tanking their property values? Absolute rubbish.
As Derek Smalls once (ok several times) said: “there’s a fine line between stupid and clever”.
If the ball game is over where can I find the box score
This whole thing is steadily moving toward in inevitable Tustin conclusion…. well played, Tustin, well played…
BTW, any word from Selig’s A’s blue ribbon panel yet???
Irvine would make more sense than Tustin, although no one wants to mess with the Irvine Company (totally understandably).