Walt Disney Co. is planning major upgrades to its parking and transportation facilities at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim in preparation for the opening of its soon-to-start Star Wars Land expansion project.
The Burbank-based company recently filed a conceptual development review application form with the city to build a 6,800-car parking structure, a new transportation hub, and a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Boulevard.
Specific design plans for the project, which were entitled by the city more than a decade ago, haven’t been disclosed.
The parking and transportation hub projects would be built on existing Disney properties just off the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway and would require demolition of a large industrial building that the company has owned for about two years.
The elevated walkway would require the demolition of the Disney-owned Carousel Inn & Suites on Harbor Boulevard across the street from the entrance to Disneyland Resort.
The cost of the three projects would likely top $200 million based on construction costs of similar higher-end projects here and across the country.
Walt Disney Co. spokesperson Suzi Brown said construction on the projects would begin next year but declined to provide an estimated completion date.
City officials said the work needs to be completed in time to handle the anticipated influx of park visitors when Star Wars Land opens.
Work on the 14-acre attraction—the largest individual land expansion in Disneyland Park’s 60-year history—is scheduled to begin next month.
Disney hasn’t disclosed a Star Wars Land opening date. National media reports estimate a late-2018 grand opening.
“Our new parking structure and transportation hub are part of Disney’s $1 billion investment in Anaheim over the next several years,” Brown said in a statement. “This infrastructure project, the largest in the Anaheim Resort Area in the last 20 years, will help address current congestion issues and allow for continued growth for all area businesses.”
Pumbaa Lot Redo
The new parking structure will rise on a Disney Way surface lot called the Pumbaa Lot. The company now uses it for overflow parking for roughly 1,200 cars. The 6,800-stall structure would be the second largest used by Disney in Anaheim, trailing only the seven-story, 10,250-car Mickey and Friends parking structure that opened in 2000 at an estimated cost of $90 million.
The Newport Beach office of McCarthy Building Cos. built that 3.7-milion-square-foot structure, among the largest in the country when it opened.
Parking structures cost nearly $20,000 per stall to build in the Los Angeles area as of last year, according to data from Kalamazoo, Mich.-based structural engineering firm Carl Walker Inc. That would put the new structure’s cost at about $135 million.
The transportation hub, which is planned for a block north of the proposed parking structure on Manchester Way, would be built on the site of a 166,000-square-foot industrial building that Disney bought in 2014.
The building, at 1515 South Manchester, would be razed to make way for a hub for non-Disney buses, such as those serving the resort from area hotels, as well as city buses, taxis and other public modes of transportation.
Disney trams from other parking lots around the resort area would still drop off visitors at the trams’ current location on the west side of Harbor Boulevard following the opening of the new hub, according to Brown.
Part of the transportation hub would be a $299 million streetcar that the city of Anaheim recently proposed to link Disneyland to the convention center and the ARTIC transit hub near Angels Stadium.
The 3.2-mile streetcar route still faces several city hurdles before approval, and construction would start in about three years at the earliest. Disney’s transportation hub would proceed with or without it.
The existing industrial building at the new transportation hub site is now leased to Kavo Kerr Group, a manufacturer of dental-related products. Its lease ends next year, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Last year Disney said in city filings that it wanted to convert the building and another building it owns next-door to “back-of-house office and warehouse uses to support the theme parks, hotel and entertainment venues within the Disneyland Resort.”
Disney employees who work in offices outside the park, but who had been near the future Star Wars Land construction site, reportedly began to move into the Manchester Way office buildings late last year.
The planned elevated walkway would link the new parking structure to the transportation hub, extending roughly 1,000 feet over Harbor Boulevard to the entrance of Disneyland Resort, based on a reading of city documents.
That project would result in the demolition of the 131-room, 60,000-square foot Carousel Inn & Suites at 1530 S. Harbor Blvd.
Disney paid a reported $32 million for the hotel about a year ago but kept the property’s prior management team in place.
The city built the Mickey and Friends parking structure, financing the project through bonds. Disney would pay for the new structure, along with the transportation hub and walkway, according to city officials.
Remaining debt service obligation tied to the Mickey and Friends parking structure—guaranteed by Disney—was $325 million as of October, $60 million of that principal, according to regulatory filings. The city uses revenue from sales, occupancy and property taxes from Disneyland Resort and non-Disney hotels to repay the bonds. Tax revenues have exceeded the debt service payments for the Anaheim bonds, Disney said in its last annual report.
