ANAHEIM – A Chinese development company wants to build a $500 million, L.A. Live-style complex at the doorstep of Angel Stadium.

LT Global Investment’s plan includes a 28-story condominium tower, a 26-story hotel-office building and a 460,000-square-foot retail center with a rooftop plaza. The plan calls for 600 condos and apartments, 300 hotel rooms and 60,000 square feet of office space.

A pedestrian pathway would link the development to the ballpark.

A similar urban hub once was planned in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle district, but that project stalled in 2007, just before the recession.

Other features in the new proposal, to be called LTG Platinum Center, include a produce market, restaurants, after-hours bars, a small theater, an ice rink and a surf pool that would generate 4-foot waves.

The project faces scrutiny from city officials and environmental review.

It also faces mixed support in Anaheim.

“This is in line with what we envisioned for the Platinum Triangle all along,” said Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait. “Everyone wants to see more excitement in the area. We have a stadium, an arena and major freeways all here. This project is a natural fit.”

But another key player in the area, the Angels, opposes the project.

“The city should reject LT’s request,” the Angels said in a March 30 letter to the Anaheim Community Development Department.

The development would be built on 15 acres abutting Angel Stadium property, an area that now includes an unoccupied warehouse and vacant, weed-strewn land.

In its letter, the team noted that the project would rely on stadium land, outside of the land owned by LT Global, for almost half of its 4,900 parking spaces. The team also notes that the retail and office uses exceed what currently is allowed in the city’s land-use plan for the area.

It’s unclear how, or if, the project would be a factor in the team’s desire to stay or leave Anaheim. Tait said the project would not affect current negotiations with the Angels for a new stadium lease, and a company official said the company would pursue the project even if the Angels were to leave Anaheim.

The timing of the project also isn’t clear.

The developer would like to break ground next year and complete construction by 2020. But the company has not yet filed its final planning application with the city. And Anaheim City Planner Ted White said the review process for a project this size typically takes a year.

Randy Jefferson, project development director for LT Global, said questions about the project – from parking issues to zoning changes – can be worked out.

“The goal with Platinum Triangle is to provide a center for the city of Anaheim,” Jefferson said, indicating that his project would do just that.

It’s likely that the proposal will become a political decision, not a pure zoning question. A letter by city staff to LT Global said approval would “require policy decisions.”

James Vanderbilt, an Anaheim councilman, said he supports the project, noting that the city could work with the Angels on game nights to provide parking at additional sites adjacent to the stadium.

“This could be something similar to L.A. Live or downtown San Diego, where you can spend a considerable amount of time in the area, have dinner and watch a game,” Vanderbilt said.

“I see this project as a great enhancement for the stadium.”

The proposal is similar to a host of mega-projects taking shape in Los Angeles, mainly downtown, driven by investors from China, Singapore and Korea. Asian investors are scooping up shovel-ready projects that stalled during the recession and bringing them back to life.

The Los Angeles projects include the Metropolis, a hotel-condominium-retail high-rise complex north of L.A. Live; the Fig Central condo, hotel and shopping complex across Figueroa Street from Staples Center; and a luxury condo and retail project on the former Robinsons-May site in Beverly Hills.

A Shanghai-based company recently bought land in downtown. Korean Air’s parent company is building the region’s tallest building, the Wilshire Grand hotel-office tower. And Chinese homebuilder Landsea is backing housing developments in Simi Valley.

Platinum Center, however, would be Orange County’s first development of that scope by Chinese investors and LT Global’s first big project in the United States.

The company, which bought the land for $28.3 million in November, is the U.S. subsidiary of LT Commercial Real Estate Ltd., a Hong Kong company behind at least half a dozen commercial centers in China.

The development would be on the site of the failed A Town Stadium project, where Lennar Corp. once planned three high-rise condo towers with 1,132 homes. The project fell apart in 2007 as the housing market cratered. Since then, the property has changed hands twice.

The area has proven difficult for Anaheim to develop.

The 820-acre Platinum Triangle development plan was approved in 2004 to include a mix of shops, offices, eateries and condominiums. But the recession brought development – and demand – to a halt. Many of the condominiums built before the real estate crash sat empty, prompting developers to lease them out.

Construction started to return last year. The Wolff Co. bought a swath of land from Shopoff Realty near Katella Avenue and Lewis Street and started building a 399-unit apartment complex known as Platinum Gateway.

Later this year, the developer plans to start work on a 389-unit complex dubbed Platinum Vista, located on the site of the former Mr. Stox restaurant.

Jefferson believes that LT Global’s proposed project would be a needed hub for the community.

“The saddest thing that could happen (in the Platinum Triangle) is for residential development to continue, and there’s no center, there’s no heart,” he said.

“That would make it a bedroom community.”

Register staff writers Joseph Pimentel and Art Marroquin contributed to this report. The artist’s rendering is courtesy of LT Global Investments. Photos by Register staff photographer Jeff Gritchen.

