The mall was for sale at a reasonable value and Disney just left in on the table and with the Toy Story lot there was more then enough room to make more hotels, a third gate and even some more shopping/dinning outside the park but yeah....
This is my problems with higher ups they like do easy wins but anything with "risk" they just avoid so much and this wasn't even much a a risk, because Disneyland gets insane crowds and DCA does very well now. Plus they could have made another on site hotel and be making bank from the third park day one....I just don't get it. I don't think Disneyland would need a 4th gate ever or at the very least not for over 50 years but a third gate has to me made sense since they bought Star Wars and Mavel and now with Fox they own more then enough IPs plus other IPs from the past like Frozen, Moana, Encanto that we don't have much room for at Disneyland and would be great if we could make a Westcot and have a park with the theming of Disneyland and events going on in the off season like DCA/Epcot and it would be another win for the resort