News Swan and Dolphin Tower Expansion - The Walt Disney World Swan Reserve

asianway

asianway

Well-Known Member
Rob562 said:
The Treehouses stayed, though they were not used for Guests for many many years. All other buildings with guest accommodations were torn down and replaced with the SSR villa buildings. (Most of the front desk and other support buildings were kept and re-purposed to their current use)

The reference to tearing down the treehosues was that the *old* treehouses were demolished and then immediately replaced with what you see now. The new treehosues eliminated the lower level, expanded the upper level slightly, and by doing so actually decreased the square footage touching the ground (just support posts and the central utility column), which is how they were able to get approval from the state Water Management people.

-Rob
Click to expand...
Yeah I followed the treehouse deal closely I was more talking about the "Fairway Villas" et al
 
michmousefan

michmousefan

Well-Known Member
Anybody know if the Swan/Dolphin operators (Starwood, right?) have some sort of contract option to build a third tower to be operated by them and *not* Disney? Wondering if this might be left over from the Eisner years.
 
marni1971

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
michmousefan said:
Anybody know if the Swan/Dolphin operators (Starwood, right?) have some sort of contract option to build a third tower to be operated by them and *not* Disney? Wondering if this might be left over from the Eisner years.
Click to expand...
Starwood are just the operators on behalf of Tishman. Disney though have the final say on anything and everything visible to the outside world.
 
Rteetz

Rteetz

Well-Known Member
danlb_2000 said:
So what areas would it be serving? Would CM's walk to Epcot or DHS? I would have imagined that they would bus the employees to where they were working.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing this is for DHS CMs. He said until they get the parking garage up CMs will park at Epcot and be bussed over to DHS.
 
Slowjack

Slowjack

Well-Known Member
prberk said:
As I understand the story, the agreement to have non-Disney hoteliers build new "WDW" official hotels on site had been made before he [Eisner] came on board; as he took a look at the property and saw the land mine of Disney hotels that could be built (and the direct revenue from them), he tried to stop the deal -- but could not stop those two that had been started from being built.
Click to expand...
Tishman had been granted rights to build hotels of their own design as part of their management of the Epcot Center build. But the original sites for the hotels were in what we will now have to start calling the Disney Springs area. When Eisner came on board he tried to kill the deal, there was a legal fight, and ultimately it was agreed that Disney would get design approval but Tishman would get an even better location with a direct entrance to Epcot Center. The design turned into a three-way competition between Michael Graves (the winner), Robert Venturi, and Alan Lapidus, who had designed the hotels for Tishman at the original site (btw, Alan Lapidus's father Morris is the originator of the Miami Beach look, having designed the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc). The competition guidelines included height constraints, which presumably would have avoid the World Showcase sightline issues, but Graves ignored them, and Eisner chose the Graves design (although presumably Tishman had to be on board as well).

All of this is to say that, as I have ever been able to discern, Eisner could easily have prevented having two hotels be so visible from Epcot.
 
Y

YodaMan

Well-Known Member
Rteetz said:
I'm guessing this is for DHS CMs. He said until they get the parking garage up CMs will park at Epcot and be bussed over to DHS.
Click to expand...

Jim Hill is Jim Hill, but I also agree that this seems to make sense. This is honestly just a few feet from where Cast Members enter that park in the backstage garage, so creating a new garage here and having a walkway to DHS really isn't terrible. It's really not a far distance from the Sunset Boulevard area and only a minor inconvenience for anyone on the other half of the park.
 
Mike730

Mike730

Well-Known Member
Why not just build it across the road on the undeveloped land next to Cypress Drive? IIRC that's not conservation land.
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom