Worries About Disney’s Anaheim Pitch : A potentially breathtaking proposal needs a lot more clarification and refinement

The Disney Co.’s plan for a new theme park in Anaheim is potentially very attractive, but its initial proposal has raised questions. Part of the problem is timing--Disney appears to be asking Congress for something like $395 million to finance transportation improvements during a recession, and maybe even at the expense of other public projects. And it did so not long after California and Orange County residents agreed to new tax burdens to ease traffic congestion.

To whisk visitors in and out of a West Coast version of Florida’s Epcot Center that would be built next to Disneyland, Disney wants federal help for such big-ticket items as high-tech parking structures and a “people mover.” Yet a fundamental and unanswered question is whether the spin-off benefits to the public would justify a governmental investment of this magnitude.

Public / private partnerships have worked elsewhere as a successful vehicle for commercial development. And Disney makes a good case that the promotion of tourism in Southern California is everyone’s business, once tax dollars are tallied as return on investment.

The problem is that Disney jumped feetfirst into the fray with a considerable wish list. Not every transportation improvement on that list seems wholly justified. And Disney put forth its own plan at the same time the City of Anaheim is offering its own separate, but much more modest, proposal for federal help.

The result is that Disney’s request looks outsized; and its strategy of proposing a Disney-originated plan allowed critics to argue that little direct public benefit would result. Had the company worked more closely, and early on, with the city, it might have honed a more compelling request in which the secondary public benefits to other visitor attractions in Anaheim were clearer. An example of conflict is two separate proposals for “people mover” money--one the city’s, the other Disney’s. Anaheim wants research money for a citywide project, an obviously worthy goal. Disney wants federal help to build its own first leg, which may or may not connect with a city project later on. Why spend public funds for a project that benefits just one company?

Moreover, the proposal has some loose ends. For example, public officials and the company have at times offered differing answers to a simple question: Who gets the revenue from publicly financed parking garages?

Some federal money to help Disney may be justifiable, but only if the larger community gets something out of the projects. Hard choices that might have been made at Disney headquarters in Burbank will have to be made in Washington.