Anaheim signs deal to keep Ducks, develop land around Honda Center

A new long-term deal Mayor Tom Tait called “very good for the people of Anaheim” will ensure the Ducks’ home remains at the Honda Center for years to come, and it will give the center’s management company a greater role in development around the arena.

Anaheim Arena Management by Henry Samueli, which has run the 650,000-square-foot Honda Center since 2003, now has a contract to stay on through 2048, with extension options that could go another 25 years.

“I think this is truly the best-case scenario of how to move forward and I couldn’t be more supportive,” Councilwoman Kris Murray said on Tuesday, Nov. 20, before officials approved the contract.

City leaders made public last month that they were in talks with the company, but the deal took about a year to negotiate, city spokesman Mike Lyster said.

The agreement gives the city more favorable terms, such as lowering the point at which arena management must share annual profits with the city from $12 million to $6 million, and increases the city’s cut from 20 percent to 50 percent when arena net revenues hit that mark. The $12 million threshold had never been reached. The management company has used some of its profits on improvements to the arena.

The contract also hands over management, but not ownership, of the ARTIC transit station, which sits across East Katella Avenue from the Honda Center, to Samueli’s company. That will help erase a $2.5 million annual deficit – the amount the station runs in the red – from the city budget.

Anaheim Arena Management also will buy city-owned parking lots around the arena for $10.1 million and will be allowed to develop them with homes, offices and retail. But the management company would also have to provide at least 3,900 parking spots, likely by building a parking garage.

With the $10.1 million from the land sales and about $2.5 million a year that will no longer be needed to run ARTIC, the deal will pump some cash into the city coffers. Lyster said the City Council will decide later how to spend the money on needs such as public safety, parks and other services.

One final point in the deal, which Tait noted at the meeting, raised the specter of the city’s sometimes rocky relationship with its baseball team.

The Honda Center contract explicitly requires that the team continue to be called the Anaheim Ducks, and keep the city’s name in its current position – unlike the team now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.