Retorts: Alternate outcomes for some different decisions

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Beach and perhaps beyond.

As you might imagine, public outrage was deafening. The Garden Grove (22) Freeway, for example, wiped out millions of dollars of assessed valuation in its namesake city and helped create financial problems at City Hall for decades.

The effect on Surf City would have been –– what’s the word?–oh, yeah, incalculable.

The Mouse That (Almost)

Didn’t Roar: Walt Disney originally planned on building a small “Kiddie Land” on a 16-acre lot near his studios in Burbank. But the city fathers didn’t want what they imagined to be a “carny-type” amusement park in their city, so Walt decided to gaze down the Santa Ana (5) Freeway to find a more receptive city: Anaheim. No Disneyland would probably have meant no Angels, no stadium in Anaheim, no convention center, etc. And certainly no string of big hotels pumping tax money into Garden Grove’s treasury. Note: There is no truth in the long-repeated legend that Walt Disney wanted to locate in Garden Grove but was rejected by city fathers. Mr. D wanted a location right off the “5” and there were no city fathers in GG when Disneyland opened in 1955 because Garden Grove was not incorporated until 1956.

But Disneyland just a few blocks further south on Harbor Boulevard in The Big Strawberry? That’s the biggest local what-if of them all.