[I am writing this commentary from Santa Barbara, where today I will be on hand for a special ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Ranch Center here, to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech. I’ll be bringing you footage of the event, as well as coverage of a trip I took to "Rancho Del Cielo" — the Reagan Ranch — tomorrow morning! – Flash]
It’s been a little while since I have penned anything on the goings on in the City of Anaheim. FR readers may recall that I took the folks at Disney to task for pushing a city-wide ballot measure that would create ‘ballot box’ zoning in close proximity to Disneyland — but not IN Disneyland. In otherwords, other property owners would have onerous regulations placed on them, while the Disney Corporation would not. Anyways, you can read more about what they call the "SOAR" plan in my previous column.
All of the broo-haha has come about in Anaheim because of two things — the first was that long ago (before any current member of the City Council was in office) some deals were made with Disney that, frankly, disadvantaged other nearby property owners. Fast forward to now, where there is a property owner a few blocks from Disneyland who wants to build…condominiums (gasp!). To make a (very) long story short, the Anaheim City Council voted (prudently) to allow these condos to be built (though, I might add, with unfortunate compromises on the part of the applicant). Now the Walt Disney Corporation has decided to ‘appeal’ this decision to all Anaheim voters, through a referendum.
I decided to write this piece because I feel like the main stream media is misreading this issue at hand. I keep reading columns and editorials (like this one) that seem like there is some sort of ‘battle’ taking place between the Magic Kingdom and advocates of so-called ‘affordable housing’ – even Dana Parsons, a prolific columnist at the L.A. Times makes it sound like the issue is whether there should be government-fixed-rate cheap housing in the immediate proximity of Disneyland.
The real issue here is one of property rights. To be more specific, Disneyland has the right to do what it wants on its own property, but it seeks through use of coercive local government controls to reign in what is developed on parcels of land that is ‘near’ their property, but are actually owned by other people.
I understand as much as the next person that there is a desire for ‘smart planning’ in a city — heck, I am a former Chairman of the Planning Commission in the ‘master planned’ City of Irvine. But there is a point where a city can take things too far. In a desire to "master plan" a community, there can be a serious trampling of the rights of a property owner. In the case of what is going on in Anaheim, there is a developer (SunCal) that wants to build some condos right near Disneyland.
The way that the folks at Disney are acting, you would think that they want to build a nuclear power plant on the site. It seems very reasonable to me that there would be a market for some people who think it would be cool to live where you can walk to Disneyland. As a matter of fact, there are already plenty of people who live close by.
I have heard some argue that putting housing in a spot is a bad deal for local government because other uses, such as a hotel, provide more tax income. Umm, going down the path of making land-use zoning decisions based on which uses generate more cash for local government is a terrible way to go. It means that government politicians and bureaucrats, and not property owners, are making fundamental decisions that, frankly, should be left to the property owner.
Now, before someone accuses me of being too ‘libertarian’ on this subject, I do believe in sensible planning, and there are some uses for property that do not make a lot of sense across the street from an amusement park, but condos? Come on now. That is a benign use if ever I have heard of one.
Somehow, because one rather verbose member of the Anaheim City Council is a big ‘affordable housing’ (read: government mandated pricing) advocate, the debate has shifted somewhat away from the basic property-rights theme I have articulated above. Apparently a certain percentage of SunCal’s proposed condominiums would have artificially below-market prices. A terrible policy of the State of California, but one for another column.
It’s been told to me several times over that "Disney entered into a ‘deal’ with the city, establishing a ‘resort district’ and committed funds in return for certain ‘guarantees’ of what development would (and would not) take place around their property. I don’t blame Disney for wanting such a deal (actually, big corporations ‘using’ government this way to expand control well beyond their own turf is not unusual, but it is unfortunate). But I do blame local Anaheim politicians back in the 90’s for apparently creating a deal that went (I believe) too far. Every property owner’s rights are equal, whether their land (or use of it) generates no money for local government, or a lot of money. I suspect that this deal came together under the reign of former Democrat Mayor Tom Daly, and now Anaheim residents are stuck getting pulled into a squabble as Disney attempts to get voters to overturn what seems to me like a fair decision of the Council, which voted 3-2 to (gasp) allow SunCal to put some (very nice) condominiums up.
Anyways, despite attempts to couch this in other terms, all FR readers should understand that this is a fundamental property rights-issue. I would be just as opposed if someone proposed a vote of the people to prevent Disneyland from putting an Indian Jones ride in… Tomorrowland.
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