Shaikin: What's the future for aging Angel Stadium? It feels like an increasingly uncertain one

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04-04-2025

Shaikin: What's the future for aging Angel Stadium? It feels like an increasingly uncertain one
Fans line up outside Angel Stadium for opening day in 2016. Only three MLB ballparks — Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park and Wrigley Field — are older than Angel Stadium.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
The Angels play their home opener Friday, the dawn of their 60th season in Angel Stadium.
Only three major league ballparks are older: Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, all of which have been refreshed and revitalized for new generations of fans.
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Angel Stadium remains in limbo, with an increasingly uncertain future.
For the better part of two decades, the Angels and the city of Anaheim have discussed, debated and twice agreed upon plans to enhance the stadium and secure the team's future there. The city walked away from both deals, and for now, Angels owner Arte Moreno has little interest in trying again.
Anaheim mayor Ashleigh Aitken still plans to pursue a new deal.
Read more: Iván Herrera homers three times as Cardinals snap Angels' four-game winning streak
'It will be an issue to, hopefully, sooner rather than later, bring to resolution,' she told me.
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Among the city's options: selling the stadium and surrounding property to a third party, then letting that party deal with Moreno.
That option appears unlikely, but the possibility could give the city a bit of leverage at a time Moreno has the upper hand.
A more likely option appears to be the course of least resistance: The Angels exercise the final two options on their stadium lease, giving them control over development on the stadium site through 2038, with the city continuing to get no stadium rent from the Angels and no tax revenue from the parking lots it has failed to develop for 60 years.
Any sale would be subject to the Surplus Land Act, a state law that prioritizes the sale of public land for affordable housing. In January, Anaheim invited Angels president John Carpino to a meeting in which three city attorneys, the city manager, five other city officials and the city's real estate consultant briefed Carpino on how the law could be applied to a potential new deal with the Angels.
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The Angels shrugged. Two weeks later they told the city they would exercise their initial option to extend their stadium lease through 2032. Two weeks after that Moreno told the team website: 'Maybe we'll get a new mayor and council that want us to stay.'
One month after that Aitken told me she could not respond to that remark because she had not heard about it.
'Of course we want to keep baseball in the city of Anaheim,' Aitken said at a park dedication. 'But it is going to be something that is going to inure to the benefit of both of us, so we can build more parks like this, we can build bigger libraries, and we can make sure that our fire and public safety have all the assets they need.'
"Of course we want to keep baseball in the city of Anaheim," Anaheim mayor Ashleigh Aitken, above at an Angels game in 2023, said recently. "But it is going to be something that is going to inure to the benefit of both of us."
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
That was the promise behind the two previous versions of a deal: The Angels would pay to renovate the stadium and build a village around it, and the city would reap the tax dollars from development.
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In 2013, then-mayor Tom Tait essentially torpedoed the deal that city staff and consultants had negotiated with Moreno, arguing that leasing the property to the Angels for $1 per year made no sense when the land was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2022, three years after the city council approved selling the land to Moreno at a cash value announced at $325 million and later disclosed to be $150 million, the council killed the deal. In the interim, an FBI affidavit revealed then-mayor Harry Sidhu, under investigation for public corruption, had passed confidential property appraisal information to the Angels as the city negotiated with them.
Last month before Sidhu was sentenced to two months in federal prison, prosecutors said a city document shared with the Angels outlined how the team could complete the deal and then 'flip the land for millions more than they paid for it.'
Under the two proposals that collapsed, the city negotiated only with the Angels rather than put the property up for bid and see what developers might offer, with or without a stadium included. The city could take bids this time.
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However, the Angels' ability to veto development on the land through 2038 likely means a bidder would heavily discount an offer, to account for the cost of buying now and possibly not building for another decade.
'The number would be so low that the city would be better off waiting,' said Louis Tomaselli, the Irvine-based executive managing director of JLL, a real estate and investment management firm.
Read more: Former Anaheim mayor sentenced in Angel Stadium corruption probe
The Angels play rent-free under the current lease because, under Disney ownership in 1996, they paid $97 million toward a stadium renovation that cost $117 million.
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The city planned to make back its $20 million and much more — 'a slam dunk,' the city manager said then — by putting up restaurants, shops, hotels, offices and sports and entertainment venues on a 45-acre slice of the 150-acre Angel Stadium property.
These days teams routinely demand the right to develop the land around their stadium — and cash in. The Atlanta Braves, for instance, generated $67 million in revenue last year from the Battery, a neighborhood next to the ballpark where fans eat, shop, play, work and live.
In Anaheim, for three decades, the city has done nothing with the stadium-adjacent land it has the right to develop.
The city could build atop that land today. Perhaps Moreno would not care. Or perhaps he would consider a new bid for all the stadium land, rather than risk the rise of a half-built parking lot from which he would generate no revenue.
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However, one expert downplayed the prospect of the city developing just that section of the land, suggesting Anaheim would be wary of opening the door for a patchwork village to sprout atop the sea of pavement.
'You don't want 10 different developers owning that site with different visions,' said Kurt Strasmann, executive managing director at the Newport Beach office of real estate giant CBRE. 'You need one central plan.'
The most logical man with the plan would be Moreno, likely in partnership with a real estate developer. The city could strike a deal with him that not only could secure the team in Anaheim but also eliminate the very real prospect of litigation over who should have been paying what to keep up the stadium in recent years.
The city could demand Moreno drop the Los Angeles name from his team and revert to the Anaheim name, but he rejected that request during the 2019 negotiations and almost certainly would do so again.
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'That will be a fair part of the discussions,' Aitken said. 'I have always been an advocate that the Angels should have the city's name at the forefront, especially considering that [property] is our largest asset. That is something that is a high, high priority for me.'
That could leave the city with the option to put the land up for bid, then let the winning bidder negotiate with Moreno about the stadium. In the meantime, Anaheim could cash in on a nine-figure land sale, then generate property taxes and sales taxes from the stadium site. City staffers warned the council last week Anaheim faces a projected $41-million deficit in the 2026-27 fiscal year. Oakland sold its stadium last year and used the money to avoid cuts in its police and fire departments.
It is improbable that a developer would buy the land without some understanding with Moreno about the long-term future of the Angels, but it is not impossible.
Read more: State audit shows Angels have upheld their stadium lease obligations
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It also is improbable, but not impossible, that a developer would buy the land, start building around the stadium while the Angels' lease runs its course, then demolish the stadium and build out the rest of the site. Moreno is 78. If the city wants out and a developer wants in, there may not be an assurance the team stays in Anaheim beyond the current lease.
In any bid scenario — for part of the property or all of it, with a stadium or without one — the city would not be obligated to accept a bid.
The city says there are no negotiations underway with the Angels, and the state housing agency — the one that administers the Surplus Land Act — says it has not worked with the city on any new stadium plan. Council members, however, have received individual briefings on the act.
The Angels have called Anaheim home since 1966. The last 10 seasons have been losing ones, and attendance has fallen 32% from its peak. Tomaselli, the commercial real estate executive from Irvine, said the city could maximize the land value without a stadium on the property.
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'The Dodgers are the hit, anyway,' he said.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.