Calm down, Angels fans. Your team isn’t moving anywhere else, for a while at least.

That might be the only benefit of the now-defunct deal to sell Angel Stadium to Arte Moreno and his management company, voided Tuesday night by the Anaheim City Council. During the course of the negotiations over an original $325 million arrangement, later sweetened to reduce the sale price and pay lip service to the state’s affordable housing requirements, the city quietly reinstated the club’s lease that runs through the 2029 season.

Under the terms, Moreno’s company, SRB Management, would renovate the ballpark and fund it by turning the current parking lots into another of those faux “neighborhoods” so popular with stadium and arena planners.

This, of course, was well before the revelations of the secrecy and alleged corruption in Anaheim city government that led to an FBI investigation and the resignation of Mayor Harry Sidhu and ultimately scuttled the deal. The Angels had demanded that the sale close by June 14, and Tuesday night’s City Council vote apparently was the official reply.

So we will again hear from Long Beach representatives with visions of a waterfront ballpark. Other Orange County destinations (Tustin? Irvine?) might again make overtures. And we might even hear from the Inland Empire, which with 4.65 million residents as of last July is the 12th-largest metropolitan area in the country and the largest with no major-league franchise of any sort, should anyone there be ambitious enough to make a proposal.

Really, it’s happened before. Riverside attorney Gary Foltz tried to drum up local support in the ’90s and early 2000s to pursue a big-league team, offering shares in Inland Empire Baseball LLC – sort of a personal seat/ownership license – to help fund a team purchase and stadium construction. He actually made a quixotic stab at the Angels early in 1996, also inquired about the Oakland A’s and then-Florida Marlins and actually got an audience with MLB’s relocation committee when the Montreal Expos were for sale in 2003.

Oh, and his try for the Angels? That occurred during a period when the prospective sale of the club by Gene and Jackie Autry to Disney hit a snag over – all together, now – redevelopment around the stadium, in that case a “Sportstown” concept pursued by the city. The more things change …

The point is, Arte has time to field – drum up? – more sweetheart offers. More likely, though, the movers and shakers in Anaheim probably will wait until things cool down and propose a new deal similar to the old one, only more carefully calibrated.

Thus, maybe it behooves the Angels to react quietly. Spokeswoman Marie Garvey issued a statement Wednesday saying the organization was “currently exploring all of its options.” No sense in being provocative yet.

In the meantime, an aging but serviceable ballpark and acres of relatively convenient parking still await Angels fans at that plot of land bordered by Katella Avenue, State College Boulevard, Orangewood Avenue and the 57 Freeway. And have we mentioned it’s easier to get out of the Angel Stadium parking lot immediately after a game than it is to escape Chavez Ravine?

It’s probably an accident of bad timing for the Angels that, just as the team itself is showing signs of serious life for the first time in years, the collapse of the stadium deal and all of the revelations surrounding it have taken attention from what’s happening on the field.

Maybe it was significant that at Tuesday night’s City Council session, in which the unanimous vote to void the deal finally took place just before 11 p.m., the chambers were packed and virtually all of those who showed up were against the deal. Or maybe not. Normally those opposed to an issue are the ones who mobilize at such public meetings. Those who are pro-Angels might have been, you know, actually watching their team play.

The ballpark “neighborhood” concept seems to be an easy way to sell a new or revamped facility to the masses, the idea being that shops, restaurants, hotels and office buildings will be popular enough to pay for not only themselves but also the stadium or arena in their midst. It was the impetus for the Atlanta Braves’ move to suburban Cobb County, Ga. It is the driver in the A’s $1 billion (or so) waterfront ballpark proposal at Howard Terminal, though in their approach to their fan base the A’s have done themselves no favors.

It was, in fact, likely the original motivation for the construction of the arena formerly known as Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The real estate across from the arena was transformed from parking lots to what is now L.A. Live, and while owner AEG has benefited from it big time, so has that portion of downtown.

So the concept isn’t the problem. Similarly, selling a city-owned facility to a private owner – the byproducts of which include collecting property taxes and saving public money that’s otherwise used to maintain the facility – can be a positive.

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But the way it was done, behind the public’s back, with an end-run around the state’s affordable housing regulations and – at least in the case of the former mayor – with ulterior motives? Very big problem.

The best solution? Negotiate fairly, and transparently, and come up with a deal that will keep the Angels right where they are, easily accessible by freeway and in the center of their primary fan base.

And leave any talk of campaign contributions out of it.

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