ANAHEIM HAS COLOSSAL DREAMS OF SPORTS PLAYLAND.

Byline: Barbara A. Serrano Seattle Times

People here call it Sportstown Anaheim, and for Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring it might just be a civic dream too tempting to pass up.

Tourists stepping off a high-speed train for a professional football game and getting lost in a 159-acre playland that's much too fun ever to leave.

A $200 million football stadium within strolling distance of a sports hall of fame, night clubs and virtual-reality games. Tree-lined paths, with names like Gene Autry Way, and food and fashion at every corner. An Old West of rodeos, saloons and movie sets beckoning visitors to a New West of Eddie Bauer, Starbucks and NikeTown shoes.

Flush with the success of a mythical mouse, hockey's Mighty Ducks and baseball's Angels, Anaheim is pursuing an ambitious plan to create one of the largest entertainment centers in the country.

Most cities lure NFL teams with tax breaks and club seating, but this Southern California community is offering the Seahawks something uniquely enticing: the opportunity to participate in the creation of Sportstown and take a chunk of the profits.

"Behring's looking for something that's more than just a stadium, and we think we have the plan to accommodate him," city spokesman Bret Colson said.

Plans for Sportstown, a year in the making, were revealed just a month ago, coming from the architectural visionaries behind Universal CityWalk and San Diego's Horton Plaza.

For Anaheim, it fits neatly into a broader vision for the city's future.

While King County officials in Seattle haggle over extra pennies on the sales tax and are proud of their plans for a new retro baseball stadium for the Mariners, the home of Disneyland has at least $1.5 billion worth of tourism and civic development projects already on the table:

Giving the restaurant-hotel district around Disneyland a face lift by burying cables, widening streets and taking down neon signs, some of which date back to the 1950s. The price tag: $174 million.

Refurbishing the Anaheim Convention Center and doubling its size. The price tag: $150 million (first phase).

Converting Anaheim Stadium, home of the Angels, back to a baseball-only facility and upgrading box seats and luxury seating by 1998. The price tag: $100 million.

Creating Sportstown and, with it, a new 70,000-seat football stadium. City officials are aiming for an opening in 1999 or 2000. The price tag: Estimates hover around $1 billion.

Efforts also are under way to lure a professional basketball team, perhaps the Clippers, to play at Anaheim Arena, a relatively new sports/entertainment arena that's home to the Mighty Ducks of the NHL.

"I think it can all be done," City Councilman Bob Zemel said of Anaheim's wish list. "We wouldn't put it on the plate if we didn't think it could be."

Not everyone is enthralled with such heady plans, much less the talk about luring an NFL football team from Seattle.

Lois Gallagher, a resident of Anaheim since 1953, acknowledges that tourism gives the city a good image, "but there's an awful lot of suffering among people, and the city ignores it."

Anaheim, a city of 296,000, sits on the south edge of Los Angeles, its 1960s suburban tracts and apartment complexes dotted by palm trees and crisscrossed by five major freeways.

As California suburbs go, this one has long had a unique identity. Host to a year-round tourism industry, well over half of Anaheim's $132 million annual general-fund budget comes just from hotel bed taxes and sales-tax revenue. It has more than $800 million sitting in the bank and runs its own utility.

The bankruptcy of Orange County put a crimp in things for a while, especially when city officials had to admit they had borrowed $100 million to bet on the bond market. But most of the money lost has already been repaid from city reserves. The secret, city officials say, is being home to a company that thrives on creating the impossible and that likes to go on spending sprees: the Disney Co.

It is perhaps little surprise, then, that Anaheim might embark on the construction of a new football stadium for the Seahawks and Sportstown without really knowing how to pay for them.

The plan is to get a consortium of developers to develop 159 city-owned acres located two miles from Disneyland and to keep city expenses to a minimum. Anaheim figures it could generate millions, not just in lease payments but in new sales-tax revenues.

"What we want to do is basically redefine how people are entertained . . . and convince people to spend all their entertainment dollars in Anaheim," Colson said.

Ironically, seismic damage at Anaheim Stadium several years ago has allowed the city to declare the property a redevelopment zone, giving the city another tool to entice developers through tax-incremental financing.

The Disney Co. has expressed interest in the Sportstown project, which would link Disneyland with the hockey, baseball and football stadiums. But the company is known for preferring singular control over projects and has made it clear that it's not too interested in hooking up with Behring.

Disney already has purchased 25 percent of the Angels from cowboy singer Gene Autry and has controlling interest in the American League team. It also owns the Mighty Ducks, who play at the Pond and practice at the new $10 million Disney Ice Arena that opened last year.

Plans for major expansion of the 41-year-old Disneyland theme park also are expected to be made public by early spring, a project that's likely to carry at least a $1 billion price tag.

Supporters hail the lengthy development menu as being good for the city and its residents, generating new jobs and family entertainment.