Tony the Tigger
Well-Known Member
My guess is Iger is playing the long game. No matter what, this Governor is temporary.
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Orlando Becoming East Coast Headquarters for Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products
- Thread starter The Visionary Soul
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My guess is Iger is playing the long game. No matter what, this Governor is temporary.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Meh - developing wdw and its adjacency (as a form of control for wdw and its surroundings) is not really in the same bucket as jumping into office space developments across the state. And celebration is its own folly the company has minimized.
This is an asset to manage… but I don’t see disney investing to build a corp campus for others with the aspirations of making it a venture.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
Despite all the public discourse I suspect it’s still a great partnership behind closed doors.
I’ve always chuckled that politicians will vilify each other on the senate floor and then go out for dinner and drinks after the cameras turn off, this is likely the same thing. Publicly they appear “at war” but when the cameras are off I suspect not much has changed in the relationship.
What long game?
Iger will be out in less than two years and the political makeup of Florida will not change in any significant manner for quite some time.
They’re either building it for themselves now, or building it with the anticipation of using it later. They bought the land with the intention of moving some CA divisions to Florida, but that is either delayed or cancelled. They’re not going to turn around and sell the land, so it makes sense to build something on it as a place holder. They’ve done this many times in the past, so it’s not an automatic to assume that the construction will be used by Disney, at least in the short term.
If it were a folly, they wouldn’t keep adding to it (Island Village, continuing commercial construction on Celebration Blvd) If Celebration was really a “folly” they wouldn’t have continued to invest over and over again in their community projects. (Golden Oaks, the 32ha site affordable housing development, Cotino planned community in California, etc)
Also, it was always Disney’s intention to have Celebration become its own entity, just like Golden Oaks, Cotino and the new affordable community they’re building off of 429 will eventually become independent from Disney.
Obviously the building of communities has been successful for Disney and I would expect more communities to be announced in the future.
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flynnibus
Premium Member
Why spend that money to build for someone else?
Someone else can buy and spend the money themselves
flynnibus
Premium Member
These other projects are not disney… they are basically disney licensing or contracting its services so they can sell a branded deal.
It’s for all intents.. a simple licensing deal. Disney is not making this a corporate competency.
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
This is a good point and this is why we cannot believe anything in the press or the media on either side.
JoeCamel
Well-Known Member
Right, independent research on the internet is the only way to truth...
The Orlando Business Journal has obtained more details on the site plans for the Lake Nona complex -
"Now, plans submitted to the city have been obtained via a public records request and shed light on how the 1.8 million square feet of office space will be deployed and who is involved in the project so far.
Here are four takeaways:
Plans call for a dozen structures
The "Zazu Civil Plans" reveal that, at build out, the campus on the north side of Lake Nona Boulevard will include six office buildings, two flex buildings, three parking garages and a central plant.
The campus will be bordered by Lake Nona Boulevard to its south, Medical City Drive to its west, State Road 417 to its north and Helios Boulevard to its east.
Access to Loop Road, which is the main internal road circling the campus, will be available via two entrances on Helios, one entrance on Medical City Drive and another point of access on Lake Nona Boulevard.
A surface parking lot for visitors is planned on the southeast portion of the campus.
Buildings vary in size, height
As outlined, the six office buildings will total 1.46 million square feet in space, with buildings as small as 167,000 square feet and as big as 354,000 square feet.
The office buildings will range in height between four and seven stories. Per the project's entitlements, the maximum allowable height on the campus is 10 stories.
The two flex buildings will total 346,000 square feet — 100,000 and 246,000 square feet, respectively — and each are planned to be four stories in height, though a memo included with the project materials notes that the floor-to-floor height in those two buildings may exceed the 25-foot per-story standard.
The three parking garages each will be six stories tall and total 4,625 parking spaces.
The one-story central plant building is expected to be 20,000 square feet in size.
Open space at heart of campus layout
A memo notes the project's desire to "contain a strong open space element," and site plans reflect a network of pedestrian walkways and an open area at the center of the campus, surrounded by the office and flex buildings.
Beyond the office and flex buildings at the heart of the campus, two of the parking garages will be built on the west side of the campus, along Medical City Drive, and the third will be built toward its northeast corner, near where the central plant will rise.
Project team includes Central Florida, New York firms
The plans also reveal a project team for Disney's Lake Nona campus at this point:
Full article -
"Now, plans submitted to the city have been obtained via a public records request and shed light on how the 1.8 million square feet of office space will be deployed and who is involved in the project so far.
Here are four takeaways:
Plans call for a dozen structures
The "Zazu Civil Plans" reveal that, at build out, the campus on the north side of Lake Nona Boulevard will include six office buildings, two flex buildings, three parking garages and a central plant.
The campus will be bordered by Lake Nona Boulevard to its south, Medical City Drive to its west, State Road 417 to its north and Helios Boulevard to its east.
Access to Loop Road, which is the main internal road circling the campus, will be available via two entrances on Helios, one entrance on Medical City Drive and another point of access on Lake Nona Boulevard.
A surface parking lot for visitors is planned on the southeast portion of the campus.
Buildings vary in size, height
As outlined, the six office buildings will total 1.46 million square feet in space, with buildings as small as 167,000 square feet and as big as 354,000 square feet.
The office buildings will range in height between four and seven stories. Per the project's entitlements, the maximum allowable height on the campus is 10 stories.
The two flex buildings will total 346,000 square feet — 100,000 and 246,000 square feet, respectively — and each are planned to be four stories in height, though a memo included with the project materials notes that the floor-to-floor height in those two buildings may exceed the 25-foot per-story standard.
The three parking garages each will be six stories tall and total 4,625 parking spaces.
The one-story central plant building is expected to be 20,000 square feet in size.
Open space at heart of campus layout
A memo notes the project's desire to "contain a strong open space element," and site plans reflect a network of pedestrian walkways and an open area at the center of the campus, surrounded by the office and flex buildings.
Beyond the office and flex buildings at the heart of the campus, two of the parking garages will be built on the west side of the campus, along Medical City Drive, and the third will be built toward its northeast corner, near where the central plant will rise.
Project team includes Central Florida, New York firms
The plans also reveal a project team for Disney's Lake Nona campus at this point:
- ▪Orlando-based Harris Civil Engineers LLC produced the site plans submitted and is listed as the project's civil engineer.
- ▪New York-based HOK, formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc., is its architect.
- ▪The Orlando office of Langan Engineering Inc. is its geotechnical engineer.
- ▪Winter Park-based Donald W. McIntosh & Associates Inc. is surveyor.
Full article -
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I feel at this point Disney announcing they were cancelling or scaling-back the campus would be worse PR for Disney than DeSantis.
DeSantis has campaigned on Florida being "where woke goes to die", Disney has been held up for months in the conservative media as the standard-bearer of "woke" corporations, and DeSantis has even talked of the dangers of companies relocating from California and bringing all their liberal employees to Florida. If the campus proceeds, it's more or less neutral for the governor. If they announce it's cancelled, the governor can paint it as another win in the battle to keep Florida "woke-free" and Disney gets dragged unwillingly into this whole political fight again.
I don't think the campus has been cancelled. However the plans may be evolving, though, I imagine Disney's aim is to keep its head down and stay out of the news.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
Having a larger permanent physical presence for Imagineering in Florida in one way or another has always seemed like a no-brainer.
That they'd bring people over and have them working out of what were essentially manufactured homes for "temporary" office space not even directly adjacent to their projects over the multi-year course of development always seemed a little weird to me.
Disneyland may be the heart of Disney's domestic parks but WDW is where the majority of the business is.
That said, picking up everything and bringing it here also didn't seem to make sense, at least at this juncture just due to the talent pool, the transient nature of Imagineering work that is very similar to movie making, and the way many of the skills needed for both industries are the same.
Quality people with the needed skills already live and work out there in large numbers so why try to force it here?
In this day and age, so much can be done on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Skype and I don't mean people working from home, I mean meetings where half the people can be in an office in one location and the other half, in another. It seems like they have the opportunity for the best of both worlds and when they need to send people from the Golden State to get stuff done here, maybe they could already have a work space for them that isn't crap and some degree of staffing and support on-site that allows them to do more here.
That said, Universal is definitely working hard to set up their own home-brew system here and is developing a legacy of creative development in Florida (that honestly puts everything Disney's done and is doing in that regard, to shame) and we're not that far from Georgia which of course, has been getting a lot of film and TV work so who knows what the future holds in terms of southern east coast talent?
Anyway, it feels like if a young person wants to work in theme park and/or attraction design and they want to work for a company with an amazing history in this space, they'll choose Disney for the prestige but if they want to actually work on creative and exciting projects, they'll probably choose Universal where there is an opportunity to make a name for themselves.
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lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Where people are located is actually part of why Walt Disney Imagineering should at a minimum have a bigger permanent presence in the Orlando area. Universal Creative made the move years ago. Beyond Universal a bunch of other vendors in a variety of fields are either relocating to Orlando or opening offices in Orlando. Look at a company like Vekoma, who have not been doing a lot of work in the US, but still decided made sense to have a presence in Orlando.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
Oh, I completely agree the presences should be a lot bigger than it is.
And Universal is actively trying to cultivate the talent and develop a local reputation - not just with college stuff but with local outreach in a way that goes beyond basic PR/Blog-worthy moves.
Disney's clearly no-longer leading in this regard so it would make sense for them to be able to siphon some of that off where they can since they aren't bothering with the community investments in this regard, themselves.
So how can we see the plans submitted to the city?
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
The “Dutch Neck Breakers” have an office in O-Town?
Here's an image of the proposed general layout of the campus from Growthspotter -
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www.growthspotter.com
Disney filing gives first look at new Lake Nona campus
All six office buildings will face a large central park that serves as the heart of the campus.
www.growthspotter.com
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
They didn’t abandon this yet?