Swan & Dolphin history?

[mickeyfan785]

I was informed by a cast member on my recent trip about some history of the Swan & Dolphin. He (can't remember his name, sorry) said that Walt had borrowed significant amounts of money from the builder of the Swan & Dolphin and at the time the only way he could think to repay him was to allow him to build 2 hotels on his property.

I came home and recently was reading online the history to back up this CM's rumors. I can't find it anywhere that says this story, but I did find that he was a contributor in the building of Epcot and believed he owned rights to Disney property. So he built these hotels with a 100 year lease.

Does anyone know any more info into this?

The CM I encountered was in One Man's Dream. I thought he might know a little more than some CM's as he was working in this particular area, but finding no truth to it online, I'm starting to question his ideas.

 

[DisneyJoe]

It's here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World_Swan#History

"The Tishman Group, the contractor who was hired to build Epcot and who also had hotels in the nearby Disney hotel zone, claimed that the Epcot deal gave them exclusive rights to operate convention hotels on the Disney property"

It doesn't sound like Walt was involved - don't forget, Walt died in late 1966.

 

[mickeyfan785]

It's here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World_Swan#History

"The Tishman Group, the contractor who was hired to build Epcot and who also had hotels in the nearby Disney hotel zone, claimed that the Epcot deal gave them exclusive rights to operate convention hotels on the Disney property"

It doesn't sound like Walt was involved - don't forget, Walt died in late 1966.

Exactly what I was thinking as Walt was dead many years before Swan & Dolphin. But we know people get money hungry especially when it comes to Disney. Thanks for the link!

 

[Cosmic Commando]

My impression of the story I think is almost exclusively from Realityland . Basically, in the early 80's, the folks in charge at WDW had lost their appetite for operating hotels and were going to let outside companies start developing hotels in some choice sites, specifically the Grand Floridian site. Eisner came in and decided that if there was money to be made off of hotels at WDW, then Disney should be the ones making that money. He broke the deal with the hotel contractor, it ended up in court, and the settlement eventually reached was the Swan and Dolphin.

I skimmed the NY Times article cited in Wikipedia, but I honestly didn't see anything about Tishman being involved in EPCOT and getting rights that way. I did see a couple of interesting paragraphs that seem to support the Realityland story.

"More importantly, perhaps, Eisner is hoping to avoid some mistakes made at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., where the company vastly underestimated the number of people who would pay money - often top dollar - to stay at Disney hotels within the parks. At Disneyland, which opened in 1955, the theme park itself amounted to just 80 acres. Walt Disney was enraged when dozens of hotels opened on the park's periphery. Disney planned to remedy the situation in Florida, where, secretly at first, he bought 28,000 acres - more than 350 times the area of Disneyland. But Disney died of cancer shortly thereafter, and when Walt Disney World in Orlando opened for business in 1971, it contained only two hotels, though more were planned. Nearly 11 million people came the first year, and, by necessity, many of them stayed at hotels outside the park. In 1985, Eisner & Company established the Disney Development Company, a subsidiary whose mandate is to develop the property outside the theme-park gates. A linchpin of the strategy involves building convention hotels to lure off-season visitors (the Swan and Dolphin will be the largest convention center in the Southeast). Though these plans have met local opposition, the company sees sufficient reason to build. Disney's theme parks and resorts last year accounted for approximately 64 percent of the company's annual operating profits and 56 percent of its revenue."

"The relationship between Disney, which owns the property, and Tishman Realty, the managing partner that built and developed the hotels (with its partners), started out acrimoniously when Tishman sued Disney for an alleged breach of contract involving potential competition over a separate hotel scheme. The case was finally settled out of court. Eventually, Tishman and Disney reached an agreement in which Disney would assume creative control over two new hotels, the Swan (now operated by Westin) and the Dolphin (by Sheraton). In return, Tishman got the site he wanted - adjacent to Epcot, in the park's lucrative center."

 

[marni1971]

Indeed. The original site was where the TDO building is today. The original 2 hotels were very nondescript. As part of the site deal Eisner wanted the architecture to stand out.