Niles: Why Disney's real community of tomorrow is Anaheim

Disneyland is continuing its roadway show promoting its DisneylandForward proposal for zoning modifications at the resort. This month, the resort hosted a coffee-and-doughnuts details session in Anaheim's Eucalyptus Park, while next month it heads to Ponderosa Park. The meets will continue monthly through the end of the year.

I do not live near Disneyland, but I have lived prior to in a community throughout the street from a significant amusement park. Years earlier, I lived in the Orange Tree development that stands throughout Turkey Lake Road from Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure in Orlando. I have some experience with what Disneyland's neighbors withstand on a daily basis.

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Disneyland is asking Anaheim to alter the rules that govern how Disney can use its land in the city. Specifically, Disney is asking for flexibility to develop tourist attractions on area that is now reserved for other uses, such as parking. At first look, utilizing parking as a buffer in between attractions and surrounding houses appears to make good sense. The further away that screaming roller coaster riders are, the less sound to trouble neighbors.

Outdoor adventure flights are far from the only type of theme park attraction-- and not Disney's specialty, anyway. From my experience in Orange Tree, I would much rather live across the street from the back of a bunch of program structures than to have thousands of cars and trucks driving out from parking lots onto that street every day.

On the other side of the resort, as a Disneyland fan and regular visitor, I would enjoy to see Disneyland develop a crosswalk over Harbor Boulevard that would enable thousands of resort visitors like me safe access to the hotels and dining establishments on the other side of Harbor, without needing to cross that hectic street at ground level. Business owners on Harbor battled a previous Disneyland proposal for a crosswalk that would have bypassed the Harbor sidewalk.

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In both cases, Disneyland could get the land-use flexibility it wants in manner ins which really create much better situations for the resort's next-door neighbors than they have now. Thirteen months of lockdown must have gotten rid of any dream that Anaheim and its residents would be better off without the Disneyland Resort. Given that Disneyland is not going anywhere, how will Disney and its next-door neighbors work together to produce a situation that works much better for all?

Good settlements can, and should, be tough. But the appropriate action to being pushed by a powerful organization is to organize, push back and stand for a much better deal. Contrast the DisneylandForward procedure with the ongoing farce in Central Florida, where Disney took pleasure in decades of nearly undisputed authority over the Walt Disney World Resort and now deals with a state government that wants to control Disney for ideological functions.

Walt Disney bought all that land outside Orlando to develop an experimental, model neighborhood-- a model for cities around the world. How paradoxical, then, that the better design for a functional neighborhood would be found back at the home of his initial theme park, in Anaheim.