News Crossroads Plaza Faces Demoliton

[Casper Gutman]

There are other affordable dining option besides Crossroads. If people are to lazy to drive elsewhere that's their own problem. You really aren't giving me any convincing evidence as to why my opinion is wrong.

Not everyone goes to WDW to drive around an unfamiliar city looking for cheap food, a drug store, etc. WDW goes to great, great pains to create a “bubble,” so it shouldn’t be surprising when guests vacation attempt to stay within the bubble as much as possible.

The Crossroads filled a niche WDW doesn’t want to fill - and doesn’t really want filled.

Your opinions aren’t wrong, they’re opinions. Your attempt to discount and mock other people’s opinions and label those people as foolish is wrong.

 

[jakeman]

One interesting question; what reason did Disney give for selling the land?

Obviously so 25 years later they could bully the FDOT into destroying Crossroads for a highway exit ramp.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Obviously so 25 years later they could bully the FDOT into destroying Crossroads for a highway exit ramp.

30 years, I believe. It was a genuine question with no hidden motive.

You should really read up on something called “lobbying.” Also, look into the way major businesses and governments interact in America (or anywhere, really). You might also read the Foglesong book I mentioned (it’s published by Yale University Press, I don’t know if you trust them). For a recent example of how WDW and the government “cooperate,” check out accounts of how the Disney Springs parking garages were built. I think you’ll be interested!

 

[Casper Gutman]

I would buy that excuse if we didn't live in the era of GPS

You seem to have a hard time grasping that your preferences and experiences are not everyone’s preferences and experiences.

 

[jakeman]

30 years, I believe. It was a genuine question with no hidden motive.

You should really read up on something called “lobbying.” Also, look into the way major businesses and governments interact in America (or anywhere, really). You might also read the Foglesong book I mentioned (it’s published by Yale University Press, I don’t know if you trust them). For a recent example of how WDW and the government “cooperate,” check out accounts of how the Disney Springs parking garages were built. I think you’ll be interested!

Sometimes a duck is just a duck and not a multi-billion dollar corporation hell bent on destroying a strip mall.

I understand your points that you continuously make, but based on the information presented in the article and my own anecdotal efforts to route around that area since I was a teenager, I have a hard time connecting the dots in this case with the collusion that you really want to be happening.

It's been a year. If the lawyers representing the Crossroads business haven't found a solution that addresses the traffic and preserves the business and made it public there are two scenarios 1) they are crappy lawyers or 2) it doesn't exist.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Sometimes a duck is just a duck and not a multi-billion dollar corporation hell bent on destroying a strip mall.

I understand your points that you continuously make, but based on the information presented in the article and my own anecdotal efforts to route around that area since I was a teenager, I have a hard time connecting the dots in this case with the collusion that you really want to be happening.

It's been a year. If the lawyers representing the Crossroads business haven't found a solution that addresses the traffic and preserves the business and made it public there are two scenarios 1) they are crappy lawyers or 2) it doesn't exist.

I ask again: have you read the op article? It provides more than enough basis for a reading in which the government and WDW are cooperating in the way governments and large businesses often do, a reading you have tried hard not merely to disagree with but to completely marginalize.

We need not even call it “collusion.” You know what would really help traffic there, if that was the only goal? Closing that WDW entrance. Or you could tear down some hotel plaza structures to build the needed ramps. But those solutions are silly, and I personally wouldn’t even consider them, because it goes without saying that any development in that area has to help WDW first and foremost. They are the big dog in Orlando. And just like that, not unreasonably, WDW gets more consideration than the shops in Crossroads. But there is evidence in that article and in Disney’s past behavior that the cooperation could go deeper.

Perhaps a muckity-muck from WDW is lunching with a local governmental mover-and-shaker and says, “Gee Bob, that Crossroads sure does cause traffic problems.” Nothing grand, nothing illegal.

Discounting suggestions of that kind as crazy is disingenuous.

As for lawyers, ever heard the phrase “You don’t sue God in Heaven, and you don’t sue Disney in Orlando?”

 

[marni1971]

I’m just glad Hooters next door is staying. It came close....

 

[s8film40]

This whole thing is so stupid. What really need to be done to address traffic is widening of I-4, but they don't have any plans to do that. Sending outgoing and incoming traffic on a one mile loop will have little to no effect. I don't understand why in Florida for whatever reason the traffic engineers can't seem to do anything without these absurdly long loop ramps other areas of the world don't need them and seem to manage traffic even better.

 

[jimbo mack]

Perkins is relocating according to a local source. Apparently to an area within hotel boulevard - no idea where the space is there? But down the road by the sounds of it!

 

[marni1971]

This whole thing is so stupid. What really need to be done to address traffic is widening of I-4, but they don't have any plans to do that. Sending outgoing and incoming traffic on a one mile loop will have little to no effect. I don't understand why in Florida for whatever reason the traffic engineers can't seem to do anything without these absurdly long loop ramps other areas of the world don't need them and seem to manage traffic even better.

I-4 in recent years around LBV certainly has some.... interesting... design choices. I have to check the latest map each trip to check they’ve not moved an exit ramps start a mile further away.

 

[jakeman]

I ask again: have you read the op article? It provides more than enough basis for a reading in which the government and WDW are cooperating in the way governments and large businesses often do, a reading you have tried hard not merely to disagree with but to completely marginalize.

We need not even call it “collusion.” You know what would really help traffic there, if that was the only goal? Closing that WDW entrance. Or you could tear down some hotel plaza structures to build the needed ramps. But those solutions are silly, and I personally wouldn’t even consider them, because it goes without saying that any development in that area has to help WDW first and foremost. They are the big dog in Orlando. And just like that, not unreasonably, WDW gets more consideration than the shops in Crossroads. But there is evidence in that article and in Disney’s past behavior that the cooperation could go deeper.

Perhaps a muckity-muck from WDW is lunching with a local governmental mover-and-shaker and says, “Gee Bob, that Crossroads sure does cause traffic problems.” Nothing grand, nothing illegal.

Discounting suggestions of that kind as crazy is disingenuous.

As for lawyers, ever heard the phrase “You don’t sue God in Heaven, and you don’t sue Disney in Orlando?”

I have read the article considering I referenced it several times. Perhaps I should persistently ask if you had read my post to imply a lack of comprehension as you are doing?

Of course Disney is looking out for their interest. Of course Disney will use it's influence when they can. My point is there really is no need for them to do so in this situation. To jump to that conclusion as a significant motivator discounts the reality of traffic in that area.

Here is the last line of the article:

O'Dea said, "if someone has things they think would work better, we're certainly open to looking at them."

A statement from the FDOT welcoming alternative proposals. If they aren't presented by the representatives of the Crossroads businesses then that's on the businesses and their legal representative.

Here's another quote from the article:

Several designs were analyzed, including one that would have spared the property and another that only would have affected some businesses.

But the one FDOT selected handled traffic best, said Frank O'Dea, district transportation development director.

And another one:

Tomkiewicz said his firm hired an engineering company on behalf of Noodles to prepare an alternative design. That would have saved some of the property, partly by building ponds across S.R. 535 on Disney-owned property.

But FDOT said it wouldn't handle traffic as effectively.

Even after a year for an alternative plan to be presented and three different statements by the DOT in this article you're still just, "Nah, probably a better solution and Disney is just squashing it."

2+2=4 except when you want it to be 5, I guess.

I'm out to buy some tin foil futures.

 

[Casper Gutman]

I have read the article considering I referenced it several times. Perhaps I should persistently ask if you had read my post to imply a lack of comprehension as you are doing?

Of course Disney is looking out for their interest. Of course Disney will use it's influence when they can. My point is there really is no need for them to do so in this situation. To jump to that conclusion as a significant motivator discounts the reality of traffic in that area.

Here is the last line of the article:

A statement from the FDOT welcoming alternative proposals. If they aren't presented by the representatives of the Crossroads businesses then that's on the businesses and their legal representative.

Here's another quote from the article:

And another one:

Even after a year for an alternative plan to be presented and three different statements by the DOT in this article you're still just, "Nah, probably a better solution and Disney is just squashing it."

2+2=4 except when you want it to be 5, I guess.

I'm out to buy some tin foil futures.

You have chosen to believe the FDOT rep speaks the complete, unvarnished truth and that, as such, all the effected merchants and there reps are crazy liars. This ignores the articles disclosure that multiple reps from Disney had been meeting for several years with the FDOT, a fact that was discovered by an outside source and not disclosed by Disney or the FDOT.

Basically, your view is supported by what the beneficiaries and implementer of the plan say. It willfully ignores their actual behavior, what other stakeholders say, Disney’s history in Orlando, and the hisory of corporate/ government relations in general. And you are dead set on making people who hold differing views out to be loons.

 

[Horizons78]

Fudrucker's is the only thing I will miss, but there are now so many other good burger places now that I am fairly certain I will get over it with a minimal amount of therapy.

Burger therapy?

Do we get a discount if we sign up at the same time?

 

[jakeman]

You have chosen to believe the FDOT rep speaks the complete, unvarnished truth and that, as such, all the effected merchants and there reps are crazy liars. This ignores the articles disclosure that multiple reps from Disney had been meeting for several years with the FDOT, a fact that was discovered by an outside source and not disclosed by Disney or the FDOT.

Basically, your view is supported by what the beneficiaries and implementer of the plan say. It willfully ignores their actual behavior, what other stakeholders say, Disney’s history in Orlando, and the hisory of corporate/ government relations in general. And you are dead set on making people who hold differing views out to be loons.

Where is the proposal that shows traffic in the area can be address as well or better than the supported FDOT plan and preserves Crossroads?

That's really all that's need to support your claim.

 

[s8film40]

Where is the proposal that shows traffic in the area can be address as well or better than the supported FDOT plan and preserves Crossroads?

That's really all that's need to support your claim.

They just need the extra land for the ramps, it doesn't have to be that land. Whatever they are planning to do with the land could easily just be simply placed on the other side of 535 and work just as well.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Where is the proposal that shows traffic in the area can be address as well or better than the supported FDOT plan and preserves Crossroads?

That's really all that's need to support your claim.

The article mentions multiple plans that save Crossroads. We only have the FDOT’s word that they aren’t as effective, a word you take as gospel.

In fact, we already know the FDOT is being deceptive to some extent: they developed the plan with constant input from multiple departments at WDW. If “reducing traffic” was the FDOT’s one and only goal and the sole consideration in developing a plan, this wouldn’t have been necessary. The FDOT is being dishonest here, which calls their honesty elsewhere into question.

Neither you or I are traffic engineers. We wouldn’t know a good or bad plan if we saw it. From my uneducated perspective, the main thing the current plan does to reduce traffic is eliminating the attraction of the cheap, accessible Crossroads. I might suggest that more entrances to WDW, particularly ones that lead to service-lined surface roads, and more readily available cheap restaurants, drug stores, and groceries would reduce traffic. But I suspect WDW wouldn’t like such perforations in the bubble. They might even have mentioned that in all those meetings with the FDOT.

 

[marni1971]

Where is the proposal that shows traffic in the area can be address as well or better than the supported FDOT plan and preserves Crossroads?

That's really all that's need to support your claim.

Aren’t they made public knowledge? Over here any large road program - especially one that would CP property - has to show all alternatives and demonstrate why the chosen one is best.

 

[jakeman]

The article mentions multiple plans that save Crossroads. We only have the FDOT’s word that they aren’t as effective, a word you take as gospel.

I'm not taking it as gospel any more that you are assuming they are the only qualified entity on traffic effectiveness.

My premise is, if there is a better plan than the one selected that preserves Crossroads, one could logically conclude that it would be in the best interest of Crossroads to put that plan forward in the public sector with supporting analysis that shows it's superiority.

That doesn't appear to have been done then or a year later. In absence of that, it's not "taking as gospel" that the one the FDOT chose is the most effective. It's a logical assessment of the situation.

Aren’t they made public knowledge? Over here any large road program - especially one that would CP property - has to show all alternatives and demonstrate why the chosen one is best.

Not sure about Florida. There was a comment in the article about a public hearing, but I would wager that would be brushed aside by proponents of the Disney collusion theory.

In my state they are made public. They are cutting a new highway and the plan plus at least 4 alternatives were made public along with a public hearing and revisions based on that hearing.

 

[s8film40]

And where exactly is this extra land you speak of? No matter which area of 535 they selected for these improvements, something would have to go.

Well yeah, it's Disney property go figure. You can bet when they met with Disney that Disney killed off any suggestion of them taking and using their property so of course they support taking the property next door that they already sold and made their money on. You have to be completely ignorant to the situation to realize Disney hasn't and wouldn't push for the crossroads land to be taken instead of theirs. If Disney still owned Crossroads this absolutely would not be happening.

Personally this seems like a very low return on investment. They're proposing taking out all these businesses for what would likely be able to be accomplished with just simply widening 535 by a few lanes. It feels like they're really overdoing this. I also wonder how much of the traffic coming off of I-4 here is going to Crossroads and if taking Crossroads out to accomplish this negates the need to even do it in the first place.

 

[Casper Gutman]

I'm not taking it as gospel any more that you are assuming they are the only qualified entity on traffic effectiveness.

My premise is, if there is a better plan than the one selected that preserves Crossroads, one could logically conclude that it would be in the best interest of Crossroads to put that plan forward in the public sector with supporting analysis that shows it's superiority.

That doesn't appear to have been done then or a year later. In absence of that, it's not "taking as gospel" that the one the FDOT chose is the most effective. It's a logical assessment of the situation.

Not sure about Florida. There was a comment in the article about a public hearing, but I would wager that would be brushed aside by proponents of the Disney collusion theory.

In my state they are made public. They are cutting a new highway and the plan plus at least 4 alternatives were made public along with a public hearing and revisions based on that hearing.

Well, the article mentions those plans, which qualifies as being “in the public sector.” And noodles and Company did hire a firm to put forward an alternate plan, which the FDOT dismissed. This would have happened to any plan that was put forward, and I suspect you would have taken the FDOT’s word.

You seem to feel a collection of small franchise owners will have the same organization and access to the press as Disney and the state government and can launch a major PR campaign around an alternate plan. That strikes me as an odd belief.

The implication of the article is pretty strong; Disney and the FDOT developed a plan and are determined to implement it.