New California Coast DVC @ WDW?

[Bork Bork]

Came across this .pdf from GeorgeCoonInc.com, a DVC architect. Page 2 of the document mentions a to-be-built DVC called "California Coast Hotel." Could this be for the rumored Coronado Springs area DVC from a while back?

Text from the doc is below. Any insiders know any more about this? Or is it typical to have potential projects out there floating around like this?

DISNEY VACATION CLUB
CALIFORNIA COAST HOTEL
ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Disney Vacation Club decided to extend its hotel
experience with their new California Coast
Resort at H1, Lake Buena Vista, Orlando, Florida.
George was invited by the DVC Design
Team to work under the direct supervision of
GSB Architects, and Mr. Wing Chao, providing
design direction for this next and possibly best
of the DVC properties in Orlando.
California’s remarkable coast offers an experience
of recognizable icons which were chosen
to be represented in separate hotel experiences
including; Venice Beach, Casa del
Mar, Montage, the Balboa Pavilion, Laguna
Hills, Newport Beach, and Santa Barbara. The
project is presently in the Schematic Design
Phase.
COMPLETION DATE:
Estimated 2012
SIZE:
Estimated 1,208 units
PROJECT COST:
To Be Determined
Client Reference:
Wing Chao,
Senior Vice President
WDI
Planning & Architecture
500 South Buena Vista St
Burbank, California 91521
818.544.7887

http://www.georgecooninc.com/file/web site george_projectsreduced(1).pdf

 

[jt04]

Nice find and this definitely sounds great. I just hope it doesn't also include crushing debt! :lol:


:lookaroun

 

[SeaCastle]

Venice Beach adjacent to a sleepy campground and the Wilderness Lodge? Yikes. Hopefully we get some concept art soon.

 

[jonnyku]

Interesting but?

Looks pretty cool... the only thing that throws me off is that inconsistency in the PDF.... Perhaps I am a tad paranoid but compare page 2 of this document to any other page and you see a different font, font size, & layout design in use... Just looks off? Not convinced that this is legit!

Checking out the website itself... http://www.georgecooninc.com/ it doesn't seem to match with the corporate image represented in the PDF... These guys design multi million dollar projects for Disney but they cant finish their website? Take a look: http://www.georgecooninc.com/index.cfm/m/9/dn/Portfolio/

Outside of page 2, this document appears very polished, their website is lacking the same polish, in fact it appears to be still "under construction"... Just my opinion but I am calling shenanigans! :fork:

 

[MarkTwain]

Wing Chao "retired" from WDI a few years ago, so this might be a few years out of date. Not to mention that Disney likely wouldn't have it compete with the Fort Wilderness villas.

Good find though!

 

[Brian_WDW74]

There is at least one other document that gives credence to this rumor. Square Peg Design has a PDF called "Branding the Built Environment" that lists "Disney's California Coast Resort, Orlando, FL" as one of its projects. But it doesn't provide any further detail.

http://www.sqpeg.com/portfolios/SquarePegPortfolio_retail.pdf

 

[devoy1701]

There is at least one other document that gives credence to this rumor. Square Peg Design has a PDF called "Branding the Built Environment" that lists "Disney's California Coast Resort, Orlando, FL" as one of its projects. But it doesn't provide any further detail.

http://www.sqpeg.com/portfolios/SquarePegPortfolio_retail.pdf

Nice find. Interesting that they already listed it on there.

Venice Beach adjacent to a sleepy campground and the Wilderness Lodge? Yikes. Hopefully we get some concept art soon.

OP said maybe near Coronado? Would fit much better over there thematically. Then again, The California coast is different in the south than it is in the north...a Pacific Northwest California Coast theme might fit better next to a campground and WL, but then again that might be overkill on that theme.


EDIT...strike everything I just said, I just re-read the OP's post and saw the extended description...I don't think that would work on Bay Lake and honestly the description sounds like it might be too big for development on Bay Lake if you were thinking those plans we saw a couple weeks back for the FW DVC is the same project. I do think this would fit nicely with the Coronado area.

 

[Next Big Thing]

Yeah im thinking since Wing Chao is retired and it lists a DVC that was supposed to be built in 2008 that never got built on there, id say that it's outdated.

 

[mystical magic]

DISNEY VACATION CLUB
CALIFORNIA COAST HOTEL
ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Disney Vacation Club decided to extend its hotel
experience with their new California Coast
Resort at H1, Lake Buena Vista, Orlando, Florida.
George was invited by the DVC Design
Team to work under the direct supervision of
GSB Architects, and Mr. Wing Chao, providing
design direction for this next and possibly best
of the DVC properties in Orlando.
California’s remarkable coast offers an experience
of recognizable icons which were chosen
to be represented in separate hotel experiences
including; Venice Beach, Casa del
Mar, Montage, the Balboa Pavilion, Laguna
Hills, Newport Beach, and Santa Barbara. The
project is presently in the Schematic Design
Phase.

Does anyone know what the H1 indicates?

 

[Brian Noble]

Given the Wing Chao reference, I wonder if this is something that's been in the pipeline for a long time and has never materialized. That sqpeg page includes the Eagle Pines resort, another "walking dead" project.

 

[Bork Bork]

Search was not my friend! I know the site across from Coronado Springs was discussed here for a new DVC, but I can't find it.

I remember this from ScreamScape (I know...I know...:lookaroun):

New DVC Resort - Rumor - (5/31/10) Is Walt Disney World planning their next big DVC Resort? According to a new rumor sent in, plans may have been drawn up for a new resort project across the street from Disney’s Coronado resort that would feature some kind of California theme to it along with a nice pathway over to Blizzard Beach. More when we find out.

I'm guessing this is just the carcass of a now dead blue-sky DVC idea, but the location would be pretty cool with the proximity to BB and DHS.

 

[Bork Bork]

Does anyone know what the H1 indicates?

I'm guessing the H1 designation refers to "Highway 1" along the California coast.

 

[MaryJaneP]

Two guesses.

1. Is it possible that California Coast morphed into Bay Lake Tower?

2. H1 would seem to be top middle of a grid. On Bay Lake, that might be to old Persian Hotel planned site (around the 12 o'clock spot if Bay Lake were a clock face). Would kinda be like northern California Coast.

 

[steve2wdw]

While staying at Kidani Village about a month ago, as we were passing the site across from Coronado, I overheard two DVC members saying they were told that a new DVC property would be built "there", as they pointed to that acreage. I'd heard nothing about a project for that area, so I dismissed what they were saying...I figured maybe a bus driver told them that news. Who knows, maybe they knew something all along.

 

[TP2000]

This sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. The beauty of the California Coast is not found in its buildings, but in its topography and landscapes.

Take the "Montage" concept from the PDF, for example. Hotel Montage is a rather lavish, expensive hotel down the coast 5 minutes from Laguna Beach. The architecture is tasteful and pleasant, but not wildly influential and certainly not memorable.

Hotel Montage buildings - Laguna Beach

The real drama and elegance and excitement here comes from the fact that this tasteful mid-size hotel is perched on the cliffs above the crashing waves of the Pacific, offering stunning views day and night.

Hotel Montage - Laguna Beach

Where you look out your window of views like this...

Coastline at Hotel Montage - Laguna Beach

It's not the buildings and architecture here, it's the actual place the buildings are built.

The same can be said for Newport Beach, the Balboa Pavilion, the city of Santa Barbara, etc. About the only thing that might translate well here is Venice Beach, but you'll need a heck of a lot of jugglers, steroid-heads, and drug addicts on roller skates to pull that one off.

Unless they are thinking of doing some radical terraforming to remake the topography of central Florida to look like coastal Southern California, a "California Coast" DVC development is just going to be random buildings plopped in the middle of a swamp without much of the scenery and geography that makes them famous in the first place.

What an extremely odd concept for a DVC development.

 

[wm49rs]

This sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. The beauty of the California Coast is not found in its buildings, but in its topography and landscapes.

The same can be said for Newport Beach, the Balboa Pavilion, the city of Santa Barbara, etc. About the only thing that might translate well here is Venice Beach, but you'll need a heck of a lot of jugglers, steroid-heads, and drug addicts on roller skates to pull that one off.

Unless they are thinking of doing some radical terraforming to remake the topography of central Florida to look like coastal Southern California, a "California Coast" DVC development is just going to be random buildings plopped in the middle of a swamp without much of the scenery and geography that makes them famous in the first place.

What an extremely odd concept for a DVC development.

Maybe Disney wants to get into the 1920's casino scene:

:lookaroun

 

[MarkTwain]

This sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. The beauty of the California Coast is not found in its buildings, but in its topography and landscapes.

Take the "Montage" concept from the PDF, for example. Hotel Montage is a rather lavish, expensive hotel down the coast 5 minutes from Laguna Beach. The architecture is tasteful and pleasant, but not wildly influential and certainly not memorable.

Hotel Montage buildings - Laguna Beach

The real drama and elegance and excitement here comes from the fact that this tasteful mid-size hotel is perched on the cliffs above the crashing waves of the Pacific, offering stunning views day and night.

Hotel Montage - Laguna Beach

Where you look out your window of views like this...

Coastline at Hotel Montage - Laguna Beach

It's not the buildings and architecture here, it's the actual place the buildings are built.

The same can be said for Newport Beach, the Balboa Pavilion, the city of Santa Barbara, etc. About the only thing that might translate well here is Venice Beach, but you'll need a heck of a lot of jugglers, steroid-heads, and drug addicts on roller skates to pull that one off.

Unless they are thinking of doing some radical terraforming to remake the topography of central Florida to look like coastal Southern California, a "California Coast" DVC development is just going to be random buildings plopped in the middle of a swamp without much of the scenery and geography that makes them famous in the first place.

What an extremely odd concept for a DVC development.

I was confused about that too. The first image of a distinctly Californian hotel that pops into my mind (the Hotel del Coronado) has already been a major source of inspiration for a WDW hotel, and one on the Seven Seas Lagoon no less (Grand Floridian). Then you have Disneyland's 3 Californian hotels, including one based on the Californian Arts & Crafts movement, which would probably read as too similar to Wilderness Lodge.

And then of course, Disney had plans several years back for an actual Californian beach resort several years back... but then, that resort was in turn based on Mediterranean and Venetian influences, so there was nothing really Californian about it. (That's one hotel I would still love to see happen, btw... just over in California).

There's also a huge number of hotel themes that they haven't visited yet, such as the Persian, Mediterranean, or Asian concepts. So what are they thinking over there? :shrug:

 

[wm49rs]

MousePlanet had an update on this project today:

According to the story (link), the "California Coast Resort" being designed by George , Inc. would be located near the Coronado Springs Resort and Disney's Hollywood Studios. The 1,208-unit resort—which would be the largest DVC resort by over 35 percent—would be themed to various parts of California, including Venice Beach, Casa del Mar, Montage, the Balboa Pavilion, Laguna Hills, Newport Beach, and Santa Barbara. An all-California theme has proven rocky for a theme park (Disney California Adventure); it will be interesting to see how the theme works for a resort.
The design is estimated for completion in 2012. had previously created the design for Disney's Eagle Pines Resort, which was announced in late 2001 and canceled not long afterward.

 

[Captain Chaos]

MousePlanet had an update on this project today:

According to the story (link), the "California Coast Resort" being designed by George , Inc. would be located near the Coronado Springs Resort and Disney's Hollywood Studios. The 1,208-unit resort—which would be the largest DVC resort by over 35 percent—would be themed to various parts of California, including Venice Beach, Casa del Mar, Montage, the Balboa Pavilion, Laguna Hills, Newport Beach, and Santa Barbara. An all-California theme has proven rocky for a theme park (Disney California Adventure); it will be interesting to see how the theme works for a resort.
The design is estimated for completion in 2012. had previously created the design for Disney's Eagle Pines Resort, which was announced in late 2001 and canceled not long afterward.

Sorry, I have to.. Rocky Balboa...Now that would be an interesting theme for a hotel... :lookaroun :lol:

 

[TheBeatles]

another dvc resort.... :snore:

does anyone else think wdw is overbuilt with hotels?