The troubled deal for Anaheim to sell Angel Stadium to team owner Arte Moreno is officially dead now that he has decided not to challenge a City Council decision this week to void the proposal.
"Given that the City Council unanimously voted to cancel the stadium land agreement, we believe it is [in] the best interest of our fans, Angels Baseball, and the community to accept the city's cancellation,'' Marie Garvey, a spokeswoman for Moreno's firm SRB Management said in a statement Friday."Now, we will continue our focus on our fans and the baseball season.
"For almost a decade now, Angels Baseball has been working with the city to be able to continue to deliver a high-quality fan experience at Angel Stadium and create certainty on the team's future in Anaheim,'' according to the SRB Management statement.
"We welcome and thank the Angels for their mutual understanding of what is called for in this moment,'' O'Neil said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times."It is the right thing to do. But a long-term plan for the stadium site and baseball in Anaheim are still opportunities we want to explore. We will continue working to get past this moment with the door open for a fresh start when the time is right.
One day earlier, Harry Sidhu resigned as the city's mayor amid an FBI investigation alleging he fed insider information to the Angels in hopes of a substantial campaign donation, and also cheated on sales taxes for a helicopter he bought.