Las Urbanistas

Parks administrators thought the arrangement amounted to a “gift of public funds” because it granted the development firm exclusive use of public property that would benefit its private 1,750-home development, according to documents and correspondence provided to The Times. At a minimum, they reasoned, the Irvine Co. should pay for the land, and they drafted a letter to the company saying as much in April 2005.

The McWhinney Enterprises project was approved for 25 acres, leaving the door ajar for a casino in the future.

“I think there’s still room for other things, including a casino if they can get over all their hurdles,” Rosen said.

Much of the emotional and critical testimony during the three-hour hearing came from Vietnamese Americans. Many warned of potential dire social effects of a casino, such as increased crime, more traffic and even more suicides. There were also some subtle — and some not so subtle — reminders of the potential voting power of the Vietnamese community.

“The Vietnamese community realized they can vote, and now they’re simply going onto the next level,” Nguyen said. “They are understanding their constitutional rights and the responsibility that goes with that. I think the result last night gave the Vietnamese community a lot of faith in the democratic process.”

Councilman Bruce Broadwater said he believed the strong showing by the Vietnamese community was a factor in the 5-0 vote.

“You have 200 or 300 Vietnamese people screaming at you,” he said. “You can only take that heat for so long.”

Broadwater said he was convinced the casino was unrealistic because the Gabrielinos had too many obstacles to overcome. There are about 2,000 Gabrielinos in the state, but the tribe is not federally recognized and is split into at least five factions, complicating and possibly dooming efforts to build a casino. Because the Gabrielinos have no land, the tribe would have to have a statewide ballot measure passed allowing state-recognized tribes to build casinos.

“There was nothing there, nothing tangible to touch,” Broadwater said. “They had a dream, but there was nothing to go with it.”

Jonathan Stein, chief executive of the Gabrielino faction pushing the casino, argued that the tribe could open a casino in Garden Grove with proper legislation and a negotiated compact with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is the second time Garden Grove has considered a casino. Three years ago, city officials met with a different tribe and Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn about building a casino-hotel, but the plan quickly fell apart.

Garden Grove Mayor William Dalton said he had considered the Gabrielino proposal, but he ultimately decided the economics of the project were “too pie-in-the-sky.” Dalton said he believed a casino would never be built in Garden Grove.

“I don’t think you’ll ever get the majority of the residents to go along with it,” he said.

Councilman Steve Jones said he was bothered that the casino proposal overshadowed the hotel-water park plan.

“We’re getting a 1,200-room, high-end themed hotel around a water park; this project alone could put Garden Grove on the map,” he said. “It’s an awesome deal and hardly a consolation prize. I think parents are going to have a hard time pulling their kids out of this water park to go to Disneyland.”

david.mckibben@latimes.com

It’s within this great divide that perceptive visitors can find their own garden inspiration — one of many masterfully conceived mini-landscapes at Disneyland whose design just might work at home.

That’s right. Now that the summertime crowds are starting to ebb, put on the mouse ears and head to Anaheim.

Aptly named horticulturist Karen Hedges, who oversees the day-to-day upkeep and artistry of the park’s gardens, provided a behind-the-scenes tour one recent morning, before the gates opened to the public. What she and her gang of nearly 150 gardeners pull off every day is nothing short of Herculean.

“It’s 6 a.m., and we just got through laying 10,000 square feet of new sod,” she notes cheerfully, adding that her crew deadheads the gardens of Disneyland, California Adventure, Downtown Disney and three Disney hotels every day.

Sure, most visitors don’t come for the landscape design, but take a look at that garden separating the entrances to Adventureland and Frontierland, and you’ll see a fantastic example of color usage, plant juxtapositions and water-wise design.

There beside a duck pond grows a deep spray of ruddy yellow rudbeckias, tawny yarrows, gaillardias, salvias, sunflowers and swaying golden fountain grasses. The sunset hues set a romantic tone, a Wild West where men crack bullwhips and madams snap garters. Some of these flowers are hot-weather annuals, whereas the grasses and sages will hold up for years to come.

In fact, using visually dynamic perennials as the bones of a garden is a classic design technique. Annual flowers can be shucked in and out as the seasons change (and they do change here, occasionally). Designing a garden with perennials first, annuals second, results in a landscape that’s almost always beautiful, easier to maintain and, because you’ll buy fewer plants as time goes by, kinder to your wallet.

The plants in this part of Disneyland are all distinctively shaped. Each one has a slightly different leaf and sends its own message to the eye. If you live in a Spanish-style bungalow or a California Craftsman, take a close look, me ‘earties, because the vibrant and expertly blended colors here are perfect for pirating.

NATURALLY, there’s more. This is Disneyland. Virtually every ride in the park comes with its own landscape look, a design that creatively overcomes the challenges of its space.

Perhaps you live in an apartment or condo, your only garden the hodgepodge selection of pots on a balcony or patio. A jaunt over to New Orleans Square provides some fine examples.

Throughout the narrow alleyways of the square are dozens upon dozens of beautifully rendered pots. Spilling and coiling from these urns are densely packed collections of begonias, variegated plectranthus, English ivies, coleus of all colors, azaleas, fuchsias and caladiums.

Each pot is a garden in its own right, abiding by a basic rule of landscape design: something spiky, something round, something dazzling, something subtle. Taken as a whole, no single pot is more dominant than another. Together, they speckle the dour, aged colors of New Orleans Square with bright, jazzy hues.

The trick to these pots is threefold: They’ve been stuffed full with fairly mature plants, they rely on the contours and colors of foliage rather than flowers to make their statement, and they grow simultaneously upward and downward, away from the confines of the pot.

There are more ideas to borrow over in Tomorrowland. As in all parts of the park, here Hedges’ crews perform the daily magic of “color call-outs,” deciding which annual flowers need to be replaced and what “instant landscaping” might be required. But it’s the people with Disney’s Imagineering unit who come up with the grand, big-picture ideas.

Imagineer Tony Baxter is credited with dreaming up Tomorrowland’s edible landscape, and if you’ve ever wondered how a hedgerow of clipped kumquats might look in your yard, this is where you’d find out. Stroll past Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and you’ll see espaliered apples, cute rows of peppers, sheared rosemary, lavender and santolina.

Another twist and turn in the path reveals strawberries, artichokes, dwarf pomegranates and a perfectly sculpted persimmon tree.

“It took some time to figure out the best combinations in the edible gardens,” Hedges says. “Tomato plants, as any gardener knows, are not usually very ornamental. So we’ve substituted red peppers into Tony’s designs.”

Again, long-lived plants establish the structure of the garden, and annuals provide outbursts of colors and variations in plant dimensions.

It’s immensely useful to see an edible landscape in a finished form. Too often these gardens are photographed in bite-size pieces. In Tomorrowland, gardeners can appreciate the idea as a whole and more readily see how easily these plants can be incorporated at home.

The clean, French lines of the edible landscapes are also worth noting — something one doesn’t often see in Southern California vegetable gardens.

EVEN Disneyland gardens that are a bit themey and theatrical have ideas worth borrowing. The gothic garden of the Haunted Mansion takes advantage of new hybrid colors available for familiar plants. Here, just inside the moss-green wrought-iron fencing, low-growing heucheras sport leaves in unusual shades that could be best described as dried Grey Poupon mustard and day-old lox. They bob above dark tufts of black mondo grass.

Ground covers of black ajuga and vermilion ipomoea trail around headstones. Small weeping mulberries, contorted willows and shimmering coprosma serve as the garden’s midsize plants, while dappled sunlight falls through classic Southern magnolia trees arched overhead.

The Haunted Mansion’s garden may be one of the most cleverly planted arrangements you will see. If you were to swap the colors of the plants — say, trade the washed-out heucheras for ones in vibrant Cabernet colors, switch the ajugas to variegated pinks and greens, and change the ipomeas to purple and pinks — you would have created a garden that was traditionally beautiful. The color palette that visitors see here does create a forlorn sense of decay, but the shapes and combinations of leaf and branch are what make this garden worth studying.

The list of such lessons here is long. There are the tropical gardens in Adventureland, perfect for a poolside landscape.

Around the darker rides in Fantasyland, you’ll find wonderfully coifed boxwood hedges and thick plantings of traditional European annual flowers. Expansive succulent gardens emulate underwater seascapes near Ariel’s Grotto and the new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Nicely crafted gardens featuring California native plants await in Downtown Disney.

As Hedges’ morning tour stops at the animal topiaries crafted along the banks of It’s a Small World, one of the lead landscape gardeners, Mike Buhrmester, pauses to report that the blue lobelia he had been planting is rife with hookworm.

Hedges immediately asks which grower supplied the plants, and she and Buhrmester quickly figure out how to stretch their resources and still make the garden Disney-worthy. It takes all of a minute for them to devise a solution.

That, she says, is her wisest secret for creating a wonderful landscape. “We just try our best,” she says, leading the way to the next garden on the map. “It always seems to work out.”

In other words, relax. Don’t fuss. Have fun. That is the golden garden rule.

Tony Kienitz is author of “The Year I Ate My Yard.” Send comments to home@latimes.com

When Juan Reynoso purchased the Doll Hut in Anaheim six months ago, he thought he was getting a storied club known nationally for nurturing upstart Southern California rock bands to prominence.

But shortly after taking over, he discovered his historical haunt had been operating illegally — for two decades.

At the risk of being fined for violating a city ordinance, Reynoso dropped his cover charge and stopped paying the local punk, rockabilly and alternative bands that had been filling the tiny former truck stop almost nightly.

Seven nights a week of live music deteriorated to two or three, and Reynoso began wondering what he had gotten himself into.

“Without the bands, I don’t have the customers,” he said. “Most nights, this place is dead.”

Within a week, the Doll Hut’s fate could be decided. The city’s planning commission is expected to rule Aug. 6 whether the Doll Hut qualifies for the permit that allows bars to charge for live music.

As word of the club’s struggles spread, the Doll Hut’s close-knit community rallied around it. Local bands who have a history with the place volunteered to fill vacant dates and bring in crowds to keep the bar afloat.

“Fortunately, there are bands who’ve had a history with the Doll Hut who don’t care if they make a dime,” said manager Dirk Belling. “We toyed with the idea of not charging for admission, but asking customers for a donation to give to the band. But we decided those waters were going to be too murky to navigate.”

E-mails pleading for city officials to show the Doll Hut mercy came from as far away as Amsterdam and Australia.

“It always smelled of stale beer, cigarettes and sweat,” a devotee from Colorado Springs wrote, “but for over 12 years you could see and hear talented folk like: The Offspring; Blink-182, Weezer, Social Distortion and Brian Setzer.”

Blues artist Candye Kane, on tour in Milwaukee, wrote: “In this day and age, with live music played by human beings being replaced with DJs playing electronic music, it is more important than ever for live music venues to exist and to receive community support. The Doll Hut represents an era of music that will be wiped out entirely, if the city of Anaheim doesn’t recognize its cultural significance.”

Linda Jemison, who owned the business from 1989 to 2001, said she was surprised to learn that the Doll Hut’s lifeblood — charging admission to hear live music — had been against city code all these years.

“I had no idea…. how punk rock is that?” said Jemison, who transformed the bar from a seedy dive into a folksy hangout for local bands in the early ’90s. “Of course, I would have abided had I known.”

Anaheim officials say they were unaware that the Doll Hut was charging admission until Reynoso mentioned it while reapplying for an entertainment permit.

“I’ve been around here 32 years and I’ve never known they’ve had prominent bands that played there,” said planning department official Bill Sell. “During our inspections, we were never there when they were charging a fee. If we were, they’d have been required to have the proper permit.”

Jemison said it was widely known that her club charged admission — ads and listings in The Times, OC Weekly, and the Orange County Register listed cover charges ranging from $5 to $10.

“We didn’t charge a cover for the first three or four years,” said Jemison. “But we were getting the dregs of society. We found if we charged a cover we could afford better talent and get better clientele.”

At a time when many local music venues required fledgling bands to pre-sell tickets before they played, the Doll Hut took a different approach. The bands received the entire take from the door; the bar got everything else.

“We never played into the pay-to-play policy,” Jemison said. “We figured people are paying to see the band, they deserve the money.”

The club has changed hands several times since Jemison sold it, and every owner has continued to advertise its admission charge in fliers and newspapers. Jemison said it’s possible unauthorized shows were overlooked because the bar was tucked away in an industrial area near Interstate 5.

“We did fly under the radar, probably because we took care of our own issues,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of problems or fights. All those years, we only had one (liquor license) violation and that was for a video game that had too much nudity.”

But now that the Doll Hut is on the spot, new owner Reynoso is doing everything he can to comply with the city’s requirements. He has spent thousands of dollars sprucing up the outside by striping the parking lot, adding plants and painting the building’s exterior. Inside, a new air conditioning system and a carpeted stage have been installed and a new sound system is coming.

Sell, the Anaheim planning department official, said his staff is recommending that city planners approve the public dance hall permit.

But Belling, the club’s manager, is taking no chances. He says he will be at the planning commission meeting to argue that the Doll Hut is a musical landmark the city can’t live without.

“We’ve got a piece of undeniable Orange County rock history,” Belling said. “The list of bands that have gone through the Doll Hut and gone on to greater things is significant. We want to make it clear that it will be really hard for the Doll Hut to survive if the owner can’t charge admission. Quality entertainment comes at a price.”

“Look at that,” the 85-year-old retired naval aviator said. “We’re in the shadow of the balloon. It’s amazing.”

But only the 665 people lucky enough to score tickets got to go up in the gondola as it ferried them 300 feet above the ground.

“I kind of figured that not everyone who attended would get to go on a ride,” said Bob Roara, 67, of Palm Springs. “Since there are so many people here, they kind of have to ration who gets on.”

Initially about 22 people were taken up per trip, but that number fell to 10 as winds reached 20 mph by noon. “The stronger the winds get, the less people we can take,” said Rod Cooper, operations manager for Great Park, explaining that the lower number is necessary to maintain stability.

Each ride lasted about three minutes.

The balloon will need to average about 250 riders a day to draw the estimated 50,000 that Irvine officials hope to attract each year.

If Saturday was any indication, that might not be a problem, though some riders complained of plans to charge adults $20 and children $13 to board the 10-to-15-minute ride, starting in January.

“It’s such an Irvine thing to charge $20 for a balloon ride,” said Debra Rocha-Dunham, 50. “I probably wouldn’t pay $20. It’s a lot of money, and what is the money being used for?”

The fees will go toward the $1.6-million annual cost of the attraction, which is expected to lose about $850,000 its first year, according to the Irvine City Council. The city, which is developing the 1,350-acre Great Park, has considered advertising the balloon rides to help offset some of those losses.

On Saturday, riders got panoramic views of Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Lake Forest and Foothill Ranch as the balloon cast its huge shadow on the maze of runways and old hangars below.

Construction crews worked 12-hour days over the last several weeks to complete the five-acre balloon site in time for the flights, which are to be offered four days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. starting Thursday.

Soon workers will demolish, grade and landscape what is now a flat expanse of runways, hangars and barracks — transforming it into one of the nation’s largest municipal parks.

Designer Ken Smith envisions the balloon as a vantage point from which visitors will see a constantly progressing landscape.

“The public is going to see us building and growing a park,” he said. “While parts of it are going to feel unfinished, I think it’s exciting.”

The red ink doesn’t worry Great Park spokeswoman Marsha Burgess. “I wouldn’t characterize it as a deficit,” she said.

Burgess calls the cash outlay “the cost of operation,” saying the balloon is an integral piece of the suburban oasis’ design.

Irvine officials plan to spend more than $1 billion transforming the former El Toro Marine base’s cracked airstrips and dusty terrain into a dramatic landscape of lakes, orchards, athletic fields, museums and a rugged, man-made canyon. When completed, the expanse will be among the nation’s largest urban parks — larger than Manhattan’s 843-acre Central Park and San Francisco’s 1,017-acre Golden Gate Park, but smaller than Los Angeles’ 4,200-acre Griffith Park.

The ride’s expected deficit has disconcerted some Irvine officials who worry that if the park’s first endeavor is a money loser, the city might have to cut corners on other planned features such as the 60-foot-deep canyon, a botanical garden and a sports complex.

“This is a microcosm of how this park is run,” said Councilwoman Christina Shea. “We are going to be hitting a wall sometime and we are going to be upside-down financially, and we are not going to have the park we all envisioned.”

On Saturday, the Great Park’s balloon is scheduled to begin flying from a 5-acre plot inside the former Marine base, which is being converted to housing tracts, businesses and the Great Park.

Planners are banking on 50,000 passengers a year, roughly equal to ridership on the Philadelphia Zoo’s tethered helium balloon, which operates in a venue visited by 1 million people annually.

The anticipated shortfall has led the City Council to consider placing ads on the balloon, including a banner ad on the balloon surface, smaller ads on its gondola, and plants trimmed into the shape of corporate logos. Irvine estimated it could make as much $880,000 a year.

That has led the council to debate balancing the desire to recoup some expenses with the prospect of the craft looking overly commercial.

“We live in a very commercial society. The park should be a respite from the onslaught of advertising,” said Ken Smith, the park’s designer. “To put ads on it would be a mistake.”

The cost to operate the balloon and visitor center doesn’t include start-up charges, such as $1.6 million for site design and landscaping, and $1.9 million — donated by the Lennar Corp. — to buy the helium-filled ship, install a landing pad and get FAA clearance to fly the craft. Lennar is developing housing tracts around the park.

Irvine officials also have tacked on $838,000 to build a road to the balloon, plant citrus trees and buy a special 50-by-50-foot tent that will serve as the visitor center.

Smith’s team specified that the tent “emulate an aircraft hangar” by having an angled roof, taller at the entrance and sloping to the back. “No deviations or substitutions are acceptable,” the design team said.

Several of Irvine’s balloon project contracts were awarded without competitive bids.

For instance, Automotive Marketing Consultants Inc., which runs a car test track at El Toro and hosts corporate shindigs at the site, will receive $75,000 to wash the outside of the visitor center tent six times a year and clean the interior weekly.

Tim Watson of Clean Awn, an industrial-fabric maintenance company in Lakewood, said he would have been happy to do the job for $54,000.

Burgess had no comment on Watson’s pricing.

Automotive Marketing Consultants will also be paid $370,000 to staff the visitor center with four full-time employees — more than $90,000 per position. The company will receive an additional $64,000 to manage the balloon’s website and telephone call center.

Another big payout — $380,000 — goes to Aerophile, a French balloon manufacturer, to pilot the helium ship and operate the diesel-powered winch that hoists and lowers it.

Aerophile’s contract calls for two full-time pilots and a hostess. After subtracting maintenance costs, that works out to more than $100,000 per pilot.

In contrast, Aerophile’s main competitor, the Great American Balloon Co., which flies a tethered craft at Niagara Falls, pays pilots $21,000 to $52,000 a year.

“It’s not like they need a college degree,” said Shaun Asbury, the general manager of Great American Balloon.

Irvine officials said they didn’t seek competitive bids because Aerophile made their balloon and might void the one-year warranty if the craft isn’t maintained and operated to company standards.

Tethered balloons trace their roots to the 1800s, when gas-filled airships on leashes were used for military observation and as tourist attractions in such cities as Paris, Budapest, Rome and Chicago.

In modern times, outfitted with gondolas that can carry 30 passengers, the balloons have enjoyed a global renaissance. But only a few hover over the U.S. — at Niagara Falls, the Philadelphia Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Most make a profit. Philadelphia’s helium-filled behemoth charges half as much per ticket as the Great Park plans to but makes money by letting a corporate sponsor put a logo on the craft. In San Diego, a private balloon company pays all costs and gives a cut of ticket revenue to the Wild Animal Park.

But some tethered balloons have gone bust. The Niagara Falls airship originally flew over Las Vegas, but left town because of poor attendance.

And a Baltimore balloon closed in 2005 after a mechanical snafu stranded 16 passengers in the air for two hours, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Baltimore ship now soars over an Asian resort.

Liability insurance for tethered balloons can be steep. The Great Park is paying $110,000 a year for its policy.

The Philadelphia Zoo paid even more — $150,000 — but then found a broker specializing in high-risk policies who eliminated the fee by rolling balloon coverage into the zoo’s overall insurance package.

Burgess acknowledged that the balloon might stay in the red beyond its inaugural year. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a balloondoggle, she said.

Great Park officials hope their airship — which is set to fly 24 hours a week, Thursdays through Sundays — will eventually make money.

But they say it’s more important to follow the vision of park designer Smith, who floated the balloon concept as one of the site’s signature elements.

Not included in any budget is how much publicity balloons can generate, said Philadelphia Zoo spokeswoman Gretchen Toner. “Ours has become a city icon,” she said. “People have even proposed on it.”

Officials have similar aspirations for the Great Park balloon, which will be visible for miles as a symbol of the military base’s future makeover.

But turning a profit? That’s a different matter.

“If you could make money on parks,” Burgess said, “the private sector would be building them.”