Daily Real Estate News  |  April 4, 2007  |   California: Mickey Fighting Housing Near Disneyland
The Walt Disney Co. is fighting SunCal Companies’ plan to build 1,500 housing units within the 2.2-square-mile tourism zone surrounding DisneyLand that is now limited to theme parks, hotels, restaurants and shops.

The tourism zone provided $80 million in taxes last year, paying for 50 percent of funding for the City of Anaheim’s police, fire, and other city services. Disney says maintaining the status quo in this area is important and building housing there will wreck the zone’s potential for business growth.

Disney is suing the city to force it to require SunCal to complete an environmental impact study. It also pressured a city council member sympathetic to SunCal to abstain from voting on the issue because she runs a business in the area, and it is collecting voter signatures to put an initiative on the ballot that would require a citywide vote on any change in the boundaries or land use in the resort zone. Disney is the area’s largest employer.

Supporters of the housing plan say Disney has created a need for affordable housing, which the SunCal plan includes, because it pays so many of its workers $10 an hour or less.

Source: USA Today, Martin Kasindorf (04/03/07)