eh sorry about my last post but here is something i found.
[qoute]Where to build?
Walt had people looking all over the eastern half of the country for an ideal site for his next project. He had two studies done in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with St. Louis, Niagara Falls, and several other locations in the running.
There were actually negotiations in progress with St. Louis, until the reigning head of the Busch family told him that he was crazy to build a theme park in St. Louis and not sell beer.
ɔhere would be no more consideration of St. Louis.
Walt decided to find a location in Florida. Land was cheap, the weather was always warm, and more and more people were moving to and vacationing in Florida. However, Walt decided that he didn't want to locate his park along the coast for two reasons: He didn't want to have to deal with hurricanes, and he didn't want people coming to his park in bathing suits.
His team—which included his brother Roy, General Joe Potter (whom Walt met during the construction of the New York World's Fair), and several other members of the inner circle of Walt Disney Productions—started looking at available parcels of land in Central Florida. “Project X” was underway.
After considering three possible sites in Florida, a location on the border of Orange and Osceola counties was chosen in 1964. Dummy corporations were set up and Disney agents, led by Robert Foster, secretary and general counsel for Disneyland, began buying land under phony names. Walt had the team work as quickly as possible, for he knew that as soon as word got out about a massive Disney land acquisition, property costs would go up tremendously.
At one meeting, there was a large parcel of land in Orlando available for about $100 per acre. Walt said, “Buy it!” Roy asked, “But Walt, we already own 12,000 acres. Do we have the money?” Walt replied, “Roy, how would you like to own 7,000 acres around Disneyland right now?” to which Roy immediately responded, “Buy it!”
Foster worked as surreptitiously as possible, flying through other cities so that his travel could not be traced directly back to California. He even made highly visible visits to the World's Fair construction site, only to quietly disappear to Florida the next day.
The three earliest acquisitions would be 12,400 acres owned by a group of Orlando home builders, 1,250 acres owned by an Orlando investment group, and 8,500 acres owned by Florida state senator Irlo Bronson.
The first major problem was acquiring the mineral rights for the 12,400-acre property, which Tufts University still owned after the surface rights were purchased by the Orlando home builders. Mineral rights were important since without it, Disney could not dig underground without permission, and Tufts could tear down any structure to get to the minerals.
After the major properties were locked in, they began concentrating on all of the small outparcels. The acquisitions were tracked on a large map back at WED headquarters in Burbank, which Walt would check daily. By the time they were done, Disney owned over 27,000 acres, which came out to about 43 square miles—about twice the size of Manhattan, the same size as San Francisco, and about 150 times larger than Disneyland.[/qoute]
