When local businessman and two-term Anaheim councilman Harry Sidhu ran for mayor in 2018, he made one big campaign promise: He’d keep the Angels in Anaheim.

Now, the deal he helped broker to sell the city’s baseball stadium and keep the team local for decades could be in jeopardy and Sidhu is under federal investigation for alleged corruption in connection with the sale. He has not been charged.

On Tuesday afternoon, an Orange County Superior Court judge granted state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s request to delay approval of a legal settlement that’s key to completing the stadium sale. And Anaheim City Council members, meeting for the first time Tuesday night since news of the federal investigation broke, used words such as “devastating” and “shocking” to describe the allegations. One councilman called for Sidhu’s resignation and another asked for a series of investigations.

Sidhu didn’t attend the meeting. Attorney Paul Meyer, who is representing Sidhu, said Tuesday it would be premature to comment on the allegations.

Some city officials said it’s too early to predict whether the deal might still come to fruition. But other observers don’t see how it could go forward now, with the allegations of impropriety on top of standing criticisms that the deal was great for the buyer, but not for Anaheim taxpayers.

For some, how Sidhu ended up here – accused of attempting to trade confidential information for campaign contributions, then trying to cover it up – is puzzling.

“He’s a very smart man, he’s a very wealthy individual, he’s a very smart businessman, and this doesn’t make sense. Why in God’s name would he put it all on the line for this?” Rep. Lou Correa, D-Anaheim, said.

Success story

Sidhu, 64, grew up in India and came to the U.S. with his family in 1974. He moved hereto Southern California from the East Coast to work as an aerospace engineer, then shifted gears by opening his first small business, a restaurant, his biography on the city’s website says.

Today, he heads a company that operates fast-food restaurants and owns several rental properties, according to required financial disclosures he filed with the city.

Local real estate broker Paul Kott said he first met Sidhu about 20 years ago.

“I loved his story – he came to the U.S. with very little more than a dream and a desire to have a family,” Kott said.

Running his first City Council race in 2004, Sidhu seemed to want to make a difference in his community, Kott said. He supported Sidhu’s candidacy, and Sidhu won.

Sidhu approached his campaigns (he won reelection to the council in 2008) from a business perspective, developer and entrepreneur Bill Taormina said.

Citing the slogan Sidhu has proclaimed at public events, “Anaheim is open for business,” Taormina said, “It seems to have held true in many cases, except when one looks at the valuation that was placed on the Anaheim stadium.”

After leaving the council in 2012, Sidhu made unsuccessful bids for county supervisor and state Senate seats, and he made several runs at the state Assembly. He returned to office four years ago as Anaheim mayor.

The Angels had just exercised the opt-out clause in their stadium lease, and Sidhu immediately began laying the groundwork to negotiate a new lease to keep the team in town.

A good deal?

The stadium deal, which for years was Anaheim’s elusive white whale, came together within a year, after months of preparation and just a handful of formal negotiating sessions.

In December 2019, to the surprise of many, the City Council was presented with and approved a proposal to sell the stadium property to Angels owner Arte Moreno’s business partnership. A lease extension was originally the focus of public discussions.

The final deal details, voted on in 2020, set the sale price for about 150 acres at $320 million, about $170 million of which was to be credited back to the buyer in exchange for developing hundreds of affordable homes and a 7-acre flagship city park.

The city and Sidhu have talked up the deal’s promise of creating an entertainment district with 45,000 jobs that would pump millions into the city economy, as well as providing thousands of new homes.

But it hit two snags: a residents’ group sued, alleging city leaders had broken the law by improperly discussing parts of the deal in closed sessions (their lawsuit was unsuccessful); and state housing officials concluded the city failed to follow a law to encourage affordable housing and could be subject to a $96 million penalty.

The city has denied any wrongdoing and officials say they stand by their process. But to settle the dispute with the state, Anaheim agreed to take $96 million from proceeds of the stadium sale and use it to build affordable housing around the city.

That agreement between Anaheim and the Attorney General’s office, called a stipulated judgment, was filed with the court and awaiting a judge’s sign-off. But after the FBI investigation into Sidhu came to light, Bonta’s office asked for and was granted on Tuesday a 60-day delay.

In an affidavit supporting search warrants that was made public Monday, Sidhu is alleged to have shared a city-commissioned appraisal of the stadium property and another confidential city document with the buyer, attempted to obstruct an Orange County Grand Jury investigation of the deal and possibly destroy evidence, and fraudulently used an Arizona address to register a helicopter he’d bought to avoid California sales taxes. In exchange for the information he provided, Sidhu allegedly hoped to get at least $1 million in support for his reelection in November from an unnamed Angels representative, the affidavit said.

A spokeswoman for SRB Management, the stadium buyer, has declined to comment on the news. City spokesman Mike Lyster noted the allegations against Sidhu, while concerning, are so far unproven; it’s too early to say what will happen with the stadium deal, he said.

Several residents speaking at the City Council meeting Tuesday said they didn’t want to see a pause, but a start-over of negotiations on the stadium’s future. The City Council voted to put a discussion of the issue on its next agenda.

Councilman Avelino Valencia also called Tuesday for Sidhu to resign, saying “the news that our city mayor is under FBI investigation puts a cloud over our city.”

“Early on I thought there were some anomalies and I thought there were issues concerning transparency and I thought there were issues concerning the process,” State Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, said Tuesday. “I had no idea how deep the corruption went. None.”

Umberg, D-Santa Ana, and Assemblyman Tom  Daly, D-Anaheim, sent the city a letter Tuesday asking, “In light of allegations that the negotiator of this deal acted unscrupulously and outside the scope of his public office, what steps does the Anaheim City Council anticipate taking in the immediate future to remedy what appears to be an unfair, collusive sale?”

Staff writers Teri Sforza, Brooke Staggs and Roxana Kopetman contributed to this report.

Related Articles