Celebration residents angry about plan for more hotels
By Letitia Stein
Sentinel Staff Writer
July 12, 2002
KISSIMMEE -- Waving at neighbors on a bike ride through Celebration's picturesque streets, the McIntosh family is a glowing success story in the video promoting the Disney-planned town, where the McIntoshes dreamed of raising a son and growing old.
But Beth and Mark McIntosh are ready to sell their home in Celebration and move out if Disney gets its wish to build several hotels and a luxury resort with time shares there.
A proposal to nearly double the number of hotel rooms in Celebration has incensed residents, who paid an average of $300,000 per home to live in the Osceola County community, pitched as an old-fashioned hometown geared to families.
Though company officials say the hotels will further Celebration's vision of being a place for people to live, work and play, residents see the move as the latest slight in a long list of broken promises by Disney's development arm. Now some are fighting to keep an idyllic hometown concept from becoming another subdivision -- or worse, the residents say, a Disney resort.
"We chose Celebration because it was not a resort town and had a community and didn't have the hotels," said Beth McIntosh, a real-estate developer who has lived in Celebration with her husband and son for more than three years, after searching the Southeast for the perfect place to settle. "If it's not going to be a community, I'm going to move."
The Celebration Co., a Disney subsidiary, has requested to increase the number of hotel rooms in town from 1,039 rooms to 2,039 and add 150 time shares at a proposed site for a 400-acre Four Seasons luxury resort in southwest Celebration.
Another hotel site would straddle the intersection of Celebration Boulevard and World Drive, next to a regional high school being built on land that Disney donated to Osceola schools. A third potential site would flank the town office park along the U.S. Highway 192 tourist corridor -- just up the street from where the county wants to build a massive convention center.
Currently, there is a 115-room hotel in the center of town, which residents initially were told would be a small bed-and-breakfast. The community with about 6,000 residents is expected to double in population when residential development is completed in a couple of years -- initial projections called for a town of about 20,000 residents.
"I don't think many of us would have moved in here and put all our savings down if they said, 'We're going to put hotels all around you,' " said Debie McDonald, among the early residents, sifting through marketing handouts filled with disclaimers but no mention of hotels. "I feel like they've lied. I feel like they projected one thing and are doing something else."
But Celebration officials say plans for the made-from-scratch town never were etched in stone. Like any development, market conditions and residents' interests determined how the community grew in the past six years. And they noted that the hotel site by the high school was identified in maps previously filed with the county.
To be sure, fine print on McDonald's glossy marketing brochures reads: "These materials, and all photos, renderings, plans, improvements and amenities depicted or described herein, are subject to change or cancellation (in whole or part) without notice."
Residents are especially concerned about safety issues with the hotel site adjacent to a regional high school opening next fall -- a 2,000-student school at the center of previous controversies -- because the community was designed around an innovative kindergarten-through-12-grade school.
Celebration officials said the hotels, more than a mile from homes, would produce less traffic than offices, according to their studies, and enhance the nearly 2 million square feet of office space in town.
The Celebration Co. still has 1,200 acres designated for attractions, hotels and offices across I-4, to the west of Celebration, which could be used for anything from a mixed-use facility to a theme park or a working factory for tourists to see.
"The biggest reason behind the request is we have been able to get our office areas really as a viable entity for economic development," said Celebration Co. President Perry Reader. "I think we continued with the vision."
Begging to differ, a small but growing band of residents, calling themselves the "Celebration Patriots" is organizing to fight the hotel request expected to go before the Osceola County Commission next month. They already have T-shirts with the slogan, "Monopoly: Look who's putting hotels on your property. The Celebration Company: Turning Boardwalk into Baltic."
If it comes to it, resident Jeffrey Hamilton, a land-use attorney with a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants, said he and other residents would consider suing the Celebration Co. or the county over the hotels.
Already, more than 130 e-mails and letters from residents opposing the hotels have flooded county offices, more feedback than any development has generated in years, senior planner Catherine Armstrong said.
"What happened was there was a bunch of [Disney] 'imagineers' in the original planners, and they did a great job, so great that we actually believed them," said Rod Owens, a representative on the homeowner's association who is organizing the campaign against the hotels. "They should at least get a black eye out of this."
Letitia Stein can be reached at 407-931-5934 or lstein@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...on12071202jul12.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
By Letitia Stein
Sentinel Staff Writer
July 12, 2002
KISSIMMEE -- Waving at neighbors on a bike ride through Celebration's picturesque streets, the McIntosh family is a glowing success story in the video promoting the Disney-planned town, where the McIntoshes dreamed of raising a son and growing old.
But Beth and Mark McIntosh are ready to sell their home in Celebration and move out if Disney gets its wish to build several hotels and a luxury resort with time shares there.
A proposal to nearly double the number of hotel rooms in Celebration has incensed residents, who paid an average of $300,000 per home to live in the Osceola County community, pitched as an old-fashioned hometown geared to families.
Though company officials say the hotels will further Celebration's vision of being a place for people to live, work and play, residents see the move as the latest slight in a long list of broken promises by Disney's development arm. Now some are fighting to keep an idyllic hometown concept from becoming another subdivision -- or worse, the residents say, a Disney resort.
"We chose Celebration because it was not a resort town and had a community and didn't have the hotels," said Beth McIntosh, a real-estate developer who has lived in Celebration with her husband and son for more than three years, after searching the Southeast for the perfect place to settle. "If it's not going to be a community, I'm going to move."
The Celebration Co., a Disney subsidiary, has requested to increase the number of hotel rooms in town from 1,039 rooms to 2,039 and add 150 time shares at a proposed site for a 400-acre Four Seasons luxury resort in southwest Celebration.
Another hotel site would straddle the intersection of Celebration Boulevard and World Drive, next to a regional high school being built on land that Disney donated to Osceola schools. A third potential site would flank the town office park along the U.S. Highway 192 tourist corridor -- just up the street from where the county wants to build a massive convention center.
Currently, there is a 115-room hotel in the center of town, which residents initially were told would be a small bed-and-breakfast. The community with about 6,000 residents is expected to double in population when residential development is completed in a couple of years -- initial projections called for a town of about 20,000 residents.
"I don't think many of us would have moved in here and put all our savings down if they said, 'We're going to put hotels all around you,' " said Debie McDonald, among the early residents, sifting through marketing handouts filled with disclaimers but no mention of hotels. "I feel like they've lied. I feel like they projected one thing and are doing something else."
But Celebration officials say plans for the made-from-scratch town never were etched in stone. Like any development, market conditions and residents' interests determined how the community grew in the past six years. And they noted that the hotel site by the high school was identified in maps previously filed with the county.
To be sure, fine print on McDonald's glossy marketing brochures reads: "These materials, and all photos, renderings, plans, improvements and amenities depicted or described herein, are subject to change or cancellation (in whole or part) without notice."
Residents are especially concerned about safety issues with the hotel site adjacent to a regional high school opening next fall -- a 2,000-student school at the center of previous controversies -- because the community was designed around an innovative kindergarten-through-12-grade school.
Celebration officials said the hotels, more than a mile from homes, would produce less traffic than offices, according to their studies, and enhance the nearly 2 million square feet of office space in town.
The Celebration Co. still has 1,200 acres designated for attractions, hotels and offices across I-4, to the west of Celebration, which could be used for anything from a mixed-use facility to a theme park or a working factory for tourists to see.
"The biggest reason behind the request is we have been able to get our office areas really as a viable entity for economic development," said Celebration Co. President Perry Reader. "I think we continued with the vision."
Begging to differ, a small but growing band of residents, calling themselves the "Celebration Patriots" is organizing to fight the hotel request expected to go before the Osceola County Commission next month. They already have T-shirts with the slogan, "Monopoly: Look who's putting hotels on your property. The Celebration Company: Turning Boardwalk into Baltic."
If it comes to it, resident Jeffrey Hamilton, a land-use attorney with a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants, said he and other residents would consider suing the Celebration Co. or the county over the hotels.
Already, more than 130 e-mails and letters from residents opposing the hotels have flooded county offices, more feedback than any development has generated in years, senior planner Catherine Armstrong said.
"What happened was there was a bunch of [Disney] 'imagineers' in the original planners, and they did a great job, so great that we actually believed them," said Rod Owens, a representative on the homeowner's association who is organizing the campaign against the hotels. "They should at least get a black eye out of this."
Letitia Stein can be reached at 407-931-5934 or lstein@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...on12071202jul12.story?coll=orl-home-headlines