Santa Ana Subsidy Called Crucial to Arena’s Success

The president of a Philadelphia-based company hired to form a partnership to build a 20,000-seat sports arena in Santa Ana said Wednesday that the facility could probably not be built without the city’s participation.

“In order to squeeze the trigger, the city of Santa Ana would have to grant a public subsidy,” said Antonio G. Tavares, president of the Spectacor Management Group, which oversees about 20 arenas, stadiums and halls around the country. “The city of Santa Ana is aware of that.”

Tavares’ comments clashed, at least in tone, with those made Tuesday by Santa Ana officials, who--while not ruling out the possibility of city involvement in the arena--stressed the private nature of the project.

“This is a private-sector initiative,” Mayor Daniel H. Young said Tuesday night. “We’ll be happy to cooperate with them.”

Young said the extent of possible city involvement in the project is “absolutely unknown at this point” but added that the situation is far different from that of 4 years ago, when Santa Ana offered to help pay for a stadium on city-owned land with a $40-million industrial development bond.

“We’re not initiating this,” Young said, referring to city officials. Santa Fe Pacific Realty Corp., which owns the potential arena site, “is putting it together,” Young said.

Resident opposition defeated earlier proposals to build arenas in Santa Ana.

Tavares on Wednesday also revealed the name of the developer that Spectacor hopes to bring into the arena’s venture-capital group: King/Guanci Development Co., which has offices in Newport Beach and Boston.

The partners of that company are former Massachusetts Gov. Ed King, who spends most of his time in Boston, and Tony Guanci, a former rock band manager who runs the company’s Newport office.

“I know Gov. King from my days running the Worcester Centrum” facility in Massachusetts, Tavares said.

Guanci was once manager of the rock band Boston, so his contacts in entertainment would be valuable to an arena management group, Tavares said.

The development company is building a 425,000-square-foot distribution center for Montgomery-Ward in Chino, city officials there confirmed.

Earlier Dealings With Firm

King/Guanci has also had business dealings with Santa Fe Pacific, which owns the 17-acre parcel at Edinger Avenue and Lyon Street proposed for the arena.

“We’ve done several real estate deals with them,” said Bruce Ibbetson, Santa Fe Pacific’s manager for the arena project. “Their contacts range nationally. . . . One of them is an association with Spectacor.”

Ibbetson said he does not know where talks stand between Spectacor and King/Guanci.

“I don’t know what their involvement is,” Ibbetson said, adding that Spectacor, and not Santa Fe Pacific, is putting together the arena partnership.

Neither King nor Guanci, who were said to be meeting in Brea with Santa Fe Pacific officials, could be reached for comment.

Ibbetson disagreed with Tavares’ assessment that the arena would require a public subsidy.

“It’s presumptuous to say the city has to be involved,” he said. “There are a number of other scenarios.”

Tavares, however, said that, with no guarantee that a professional sports franchise would move in, Santa Ana, “just like any city in America,” would have to commit some amount of public money to the project.

And while Orange County’s upscale demographics make it a prime market for a professional sports team, the likelihood of one agreeing to come to Santa Ana before an arena is built is small, Tavares said.

“It’s very speculative,” he said. “I’m not going to be like everyone else and say that I’ve had discussions with teams. . . . Everyone is willing to talk to you. We’re no closer to having it built than Anaheim is.”

Santa Ana City Manager David N. Ream said Wednesday that the city would be happy to look at any proposal arena developers put forth but that as yet city officials have not been asked to subsidize the project.

“We view it as a private development,” Ream said. “We think the need for a public subsidy should certainly be far less than if they were looking to acquire a new site. We’ll entertain any thoughts that they have for advancing the project. . . . But until we have a specific proposal, it’s difficult to react to.”

City Urged to Consider Role

Santa Ana Councilmen John Acosta and Miguel A. Pulido agreed with Ream that the city should at least consider an arena proposal that includes public involvement.

“I think the city would be involved,” Pulido said. “The million-dollar question is, how much? That’s part of what we have to look into.”

Santa Ana officials were quick to point out, however, that the arena land is already privately owned, so the city would not have to buy the parcel for the developers.

Plans for a similar arena in Anaheim call for such a land deal. Anaheim officials hope that the County Board of Supervisors will agree to sell a 7.6-acre site along the Santa Ana River for about $8 million, but the land is still listed as a possible county jail site.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote June 6 on Anaheim’s offer to buy the land.

Tavares said he hopes to have the elements for a Santa Ana arena in place within 2 months.

“We’ve had discussions with the city and everyone else,” he said. “We need to come to a firm deal.”

McDonnell Douglas Concerned

Also Wednesday, officials with McDonnell Douglas Corp., which operates its computer division on 53 acres next to the proposed Santa Ana arena tract, expressed its reservations about the project.

“We are extremely concerned,” said Bob Young, president of McDonnell Douglas Realty, which owns the parcel. “The first I found out about it was reading in the newspaper.”

Young said his company is not necessarily opposed to the arena, but he wants to make sure it would not interfere with the computer center’s operations, which sometimes run 24 hours a day.

At one time, McDonnell Douglas was itself considering building an arena on the site, Young said, but found that the only way to make it profitable was if the city shared in the investment.

“I’d love to see Santa Ana do it, as a municipality,” he said. “If Anaheim or Santa Ana provides a public subsidy, that’s smart as hell. They’re going to recover that several times over.”