LA Angels are staying in Anaheim as owner Arte Moreno and city reach a 30-year deal.

All the talk of the Angels moving to Long Beach, Las Vegas, or any other destination were put to rest Wednesday morning as it was announced that the team and owner Arte Moreno have an agreement in place for $325 million dollars to allow Moreno to buy the property and Anaheim Stadium & allow him to develop it over the next 30 years.

The LA Angels are here to stay in Anaheim at least for the next 30 years. You may not like the name, but the city of Anaheim decided that it was a fight not worth fighting in order keep the Angels in Anaheim for the foreseeable future. The deal came about after an extra year was added on to the current lease keeping the Angels in place until the end of next season while the city and Angels team owner Arte Moreno attempted to negotiate a long-term deal. Thankfully for all involved it is finally a done-deal.

Now Angels fans will know that they will have Mike Trout for the next 10 years and the Angels for at least the next 30 years. Pending the Anaheim City Council vote on December 20th to officially approve the deal between Moreno and the city the saga that began back in 2013 is now coming to a happy-ending.

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In 2013 Moreno and then-Anaheim mayor Tom Tait were attempting to make a deal to make about $150 million dollars in upgrades to Anaheim Stadium. The deal was contingent on Moreno being allowed to develop the parking lots which would give him extra revenue to pay for the upgrades without using any city funds.

However, Tait tried to get greedy by saying that the Angels should pay more than $1 per year lease deal that Moreno had inherited when he bought the team, and Tait also wanted the Angels and Moreno to share revenue from whatever they developed in the parking lot area with the city.

Moreno and Tait both dug their heels in and the end result was that Moreno and the Angels opting out of their lease with the city of Anaheim in 2018. This started widespread speculation that the Angels would leave Anaheim with Long Beach, Tustin, and even Las Vegas.

Thankfully Tait’s term as mayor was almost up when this was all going on and new Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu was in favor of keeping the Angels in Anaheim for the long haul. With the deal all-but done Moreno is in contact with a developer HKS Architects that has helped several teams including the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Dodgers work on renovations/rebuilding their ballparks, according to Wednesday’s LA Times story by Bill Shakin. https://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/story/2019-12-04/angels-stadium-story

Will Moreno decide to again renovate Anaheim Stadium or will he try to build a new stadium on the property is not known at this point. The biggest issue to building a new stadium is space. The current stadium sits almost in the middle of the property and tearing down the old stadium and building a new one right where the old one stood is the only option. This then creates an issue of where the team would play in the two seasons it will most likely take to build a new ballpark.

If not for the Grove Theater and the town homes that already exist next to the stadium parking lot there might be room to erect a new stadium in the lot while keeping the old one intact to play in while a new stadium would be built. So the Angels may go the way of renovating the stadium for a third time since it was opened in 1966. As for the land in the parking lot and developing that Shakin’s story mentioned the possibility of making a mecca of offices, shops, restaurants, and places to live sort of like and “LA Live on Steroids” according to a city executive he quoted in his story.

So let the speculation about the Angels moving finally be put to rest and the speculation of what Angels owner Arte Moreno will do now that he will own the stadium and all the property that is now parking lots for the stadium

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