News Walt Disney Imagineering Leaving California, Moving To Florida... EDIT: Never Mind!

[TP2000]

Loved to visit Cocoa Beach (about an hour east of Orlando) for a month at a time for launches during my working days,

Ah, Cocoa Beach. Such a lovely name for a town. I'm showing my age, but whenever I hear the name Cocoa Beach I just think of 1960's astronauts partying in the sand before they went into space, doing the Twist and the Swim with their lovely young wives, or lovely young non-wives.

but the humidity and all the bugs, especially mosquitoes when you're trying to have dinner outdoors, made me happy to be back in California when the launch was over.

And then, like the astronauts, we come crashing back down to Earth.

I thought about retiring there for no state income tax, but decided I rather pay state income tax and live in California.

Yeah. Even though you may have spent last weekend doing the Twist in the sand with a lovely young lady or handsome young astronaut, the realities of bugs and humidity and rain sets in. Florida!

I imagine many imagineers will come to the same conclusion.

I think so too. I've met Imagineers in SoCal. I know the type. They aren't about to move to suburban Orlando to spend their Saturday nights at a shopping center chain restaurant, at least if they can help it.

 

[truecoat]

And also this ending statement from that LA Business Journal article from this past summer...

While the application acknowledged the potential risk of losing key executives to competitors as well as “critical talent unwilling to relocate,” the state incentives eventually swayed the company to pursue Florida, in addition to the state's affordable housing, low or no state income tax, and solid educational and transportation infrastructure for employees to use while commuting.

So Disney knows there's a group of current employees that will simply leave the company instead of move to Orlando. I think the "critical talent" phrase is directly related to Imagineers, especially the ones with tenure and lots of experience in building theme parks.

Disney Gets $580 Million in Tax Breaks in Florida Move - Los Angeles Business Journal

Walt Disney Co. announced plans last week to move approximately 2,000 jobs from California to Florida and will reap a nearly $580 million tax break in the process. Disney, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times, applied for a tax credit in December 2019 to receive an estimated $578 million...

labusinessjournal.com

Who pays for this half a billion in tax breaks? Everyone else does.

 

[flynnibus]

Who pays for this half a billion in tax breaks? Everyone else does.

1) it's over 19 years - so really only about ~$30mil a year
2) It's of the form of tax breaks for activity that didn't exist prior - so it's basically just putting taxes on hold instead of collecting them

No one is paying for them - instead the county/state put aside their future benefit in one bucket to drive growth in other buckets.

They suck because they are a 'give away' and it becomes a bidding war where its about how much can you sacrifice to win.. but in the grand scheme this is cheap for Florida.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Who pays for this half a billion in tax breaks? Everyone else does.

You have to consider the bigger picture. Think of how many jobs the Foxconn campus in Wisconsin has created. Two? Maybe three? All for the low, low price of a few billion dollars.

 

[DLR92]

I have always thought it was an awful move. If I were a imagineer, bye Disney! lol

 

[TP2000]

Who pays for this half a billion in tax breaks? Everyone else does.

Do you think it's better for Orlando's economy to just leave the area as barren grassland?

As @flynnibus noted above, it's tax breaks on business activity that has never existed before.

This is the 60 acre area north of Lake Nona Blvd. that Disney now owns and will be building its new corporate campus. It's barren, drained swamp where no previous economic activity existed.

Instead of barren land, it will soon be home to a business campus employing 2,000 white collar jobs with an average annual salary of $120,000. Those 2,000 white collar jobs with upper-middle class salaries previously existed in California, but now will exist in Florida.

It's a bidding war on tax breaks, to be sure. But since it's a tax break on business activity that never existed off Lake Nona Blvd. ever before, it's a huge win for the local community.

Lake Nona | A Community Of And For The Future

Lake Nona is a smart and connected community where residents benefit from a vibrant culture, robust programming and innovative collaboration.

www.lakenona.com

 

[TP2000]

The Lake Nona development is interesting on its own. And a good example of the power of tax breaks generating economic development and luring 2,000 high paying white collar jobs away from another state.

The acreage that Disney has bought in Lake Nona is a few miles south of MCO, literally under the flight path of arriving jets and thus not a good place for housing. But it's perfect for a business park, and it replaces swamp and barren grassland.

Here's the 60 acres Disney has bought to build its new corporate campus on, shaded in red. It's been empty, barren land since Ponce de Leon first arrived in Florida 500 years ago.

There's a couple new hospitals and a new medical school just built south of Lake Nona Blvd. The area shaded in blue next to Disney's property is a hotel/dining/retail center being built to support the coming business parks in the area. Several new hotels, new restaurants, a health club and spa, etc. All of that business didn't exist before.

Is the thought that a city should just leave it's empty grassland as empty grassland, instead of luring new businesses with thousands of good paying, white collar, professional jobs to the city? That doesn't make sense to me.

Look, I don't want to move to Orlando either. But you've got to hand it to them, they just stole 2,000 good paying jobs from California and are also taking one of the great creative hives (WED/WDI) of the last 60 years that was born and raised in California. That stings.

 

[Bullseye1967]

The Lake Nona development is interesting on its own. And a good example of the power of tax breaks generating economic development and luring 2,000 high paying white collar jobs away from another state.

The acreage that Disney has bought in Lake Nona is a few miles south of MCO, literally under the flight path of arriving jets and thus not a good place for housing. But it's perfect for a business park, and it replaces swamp and barren grassland.

Here's the 60 acres Disney has bought to build its new corporate campus on, shaded in red. It's been empty, barren land since Ponce de Leon first arrived in Florida 500 years ago.

View attachment 597281

There's a couple new hospitals and a new medical school just built south of Lake Nona Blvd. The area shaded in blue next to Disney's property is a hotel/dining/retail center being built to support the coming business parks in the area. Several new hotels, new restaurants, a health club and spa, etc. All of that business didn't exist before.

Is the thought that a city should just leave it's empty grassland as empty grassland, instead of luring new businesses with thousands of good paying, white collar, professional jobs to the city? That doesn't make sense to me.

Look, I don't want to move to Orlando either. But you've got to hand it to them, they just stole 2,000 good paying jobs from California and are also taking one of the great creative hives (WED/WDI) of the last 60 years that was born and raised in California. That stings.

The Lake Nona area has exploded in the last 10 years. Before that there wasn't much there.

 

[TP2000]

The Lake Nona area has exploded in the last 10 years. Before that there wasn't much there.

I'm not familiar with that part of Orlando metro, but I can see what it looks like online.

It's obvious that it will bring far more value to the city as the home to 2,000 new high paying white collar jobs than it has for the last few hundred years as an empty swamp.

And there's a big office park 3,000 miles away in Glendale that needs to find some new leases, and fast.

This LA Times article about the Glendale Creative Campus is from 1999. It's amazing what a difference 20 years can make, and how quickly a state like California can scare off businesses and taxpayers.

Disney Plans to Build Major 'Creative Campus' in Glendale

In what would be a major new entertainment industry center, Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday announced plans for a "creative campus" in Glendale that would include dozens of four-to-six-story buildings, sound stages and a high-tech business center.

www.latimes.com

 

[truecoat]

Do you think it's better for Orlando's economy to just leave the area as barren grassland?

As @flynnibus noted above, it's tax breaks on business activity that has never existed before.

This is the 60 acre area north of Lake Nona Blvd. that Disney now owns and will be building its new corporate campus. It's barren, drained swamp where no previous economic activity existed.

View attachment 597266

Instead of barren land, it will soon be home to a business campus employing 2,000 white collar jobs with an average annual salary of $120,000. Those 2,000 white collar jobs with upper-middle class salaries previously existed in California, but now will exist in Florida.

It's a bidding war on tax breaks, to be sure. But since it's a tax break on business activity that never existed off Lake Nona Blvd. ever before, it's a huge win for the local community.

Lake Nona | A Community Of And For The Future

Lake Nona is a smart and connected community where residents benefit from a vibrant culture, robust programming and innovative collaboration.

www.lakenona.com

It's not a huge win, it's a marginal win at best. Florida essentially paid a quarter million for each of these jobs. A study from last year showed that these type of tax breaks provide some evidence of direct employment gains but there was not strong evidence that firm-specific tax incentives increase broader economic growth at the state and local level. States and cities end up having to raise taxes to cover the subsidies.

 

[TP2000]

It's not a huge win, it's a marginal win at best.

2,000 jobs paying an average of 120K per year is "marginal"? For a small city like Orlando, previously based on low paying service industry/hospitality jobs?

It might be a "marginal win" for a giant, wealthy city like LA or New York, or even for mid-sized but very affluent cities like Seattle used to having lots of high paying white collar jobs.

But for Orlando? Orlando has a population of 280,000 people (80,000 less than Anaheim) and has a household median income of $58,000. This Lake Nona business park is within Orlando city limits.

2,000 brand new white collar jobs paying $120,000 is not marginal for that city.

Florida essentially paid a quarter million for each of these jobs. A study from last year showed that these type of tax breaks provide some evidence of direct employment gains but there was not strong evidence that firm-specific tax incentives increase broader economic growth at the state and local level. States and cities end up having to raise taxes to cover the subsidies.

How Florida taxes its citizens in the future is up to them.

For now, the California decline continues. A couple hundred jobs here, a few thousand jobs there, another few dozen corporate headquarters gone. It's really adding up now. Sacramento ignores it at their peril.

A reminder, here is what the 60 acres currently looks like that will soon be home to 2,000 white collar jobs paying 120K per year. Jobs that used to exist in Glendale and Burbank.

This is a plot of land that goes from zero salaries per year from the year 1700 to 2021, to suddenly $240 Million in salaries per year by 2023.

 

[MagicCarpetRoundTheWorld]

I think that this is one of the most horrible decisions to ever come out of TWDC.

It can't end profitably or well in any sense going decades forward unless you have 800 little Zachs running around Lake Nona recreating EPCOT Center prisms and Jungle cruise frogs, etc and calling it their own to upper management that doesn't know any better.

I live in Florida and to my experience, WDI Florida is an embarassment compared to their counterparts globally.

 

[Bullseye1967]

I think that this is one of the most horrible decisions to ever come out of TWDC.

It can't end profitably or well in any sense going decades forward unless you have 800 little Zachs running around Lake Nona recreating EPCOT Center prisms and Jungle cruise frogs, etc and calling it their own to upper management that doesn't know any better.

I live in Florida and to my experience, WDI Florida is an embarassment compared to their counterparts globally.

Interesting first post after joining yesterday. Tell us how you really feel.

 

[JustAFan]

Well, Disney Imagineering is almost 70 years old. Isn't that what you do at that age? Move to Florida?

 

[TeddyNu]

True. And I agree. It's entirely possible to change the culture there in Glendale.

But it's not going to be easy, and many Parks Chairmen have tried. And yet here we still are, with stuff like Incredicoaster and Pixar Pier.

But if you got rid of a lot of the tenured and politically powerful Imagineers, it would be a great deal easier to change the culture and reset expectations with some of those overly babied Imagineers.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories or grand plans crafted in sinister conference rooms, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn moving WDI from California to Florida is a way to help that process along. No one in Burbank probably had the cojones to tackle it while all those creative execs with tenure and pull were firmly entrenched in Glendale.

Getting a bunch of the tenured Imagineers to quit because they don't want to live in Orlando is going to make it easier to change WDI.

Agree completely.

 

[TP2000]

Well, Disney Imagineering is almost 70 years old. Isn't that what you do at that age? Move to Florida?

Bravo!

 

[truecoat]

True. And I agree. It's entirely possible to change the culture there in Glendale.

But it's not going to be easy, and many Parks Chairmen have tried. And yet here we still are, with stuff like Incredicoaster and Pixar Pier.

But if you got rid of a lot of the tenured and politically powerful Imagineers, it would be a great deal easier to change the culture and reset expectations with some of those overly babied Imagineers.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories or grand plans crafted in sinister conference rooms, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn moving WDI from California to Florida is a way to help that process along. No one in Burbank probably had the cojones to tackle it while all those creative execs with tenure and pull were firmly entrenched in Glendale.

Getting a bunch of the tenured Imagineers to quit because they don't want to live in Orlando is going to make it easier to change WDI.

We should see whether it's status quo or a new directions coming out of Florida in what, 4 or 5 years?

 

[TP2000]

We should see whether it's status quo or a new directions coming out of Florida in what, 4 or 5 years?

Yes, I think at a minimum 4 years.

It sounds like WDI will be the last group to move into that Lake Nona campus, mostly in 2023.

So... 2025 for non-ride projects like hotels, maybe 2026 by the time it has an impact on a major new attraction. Does WDW even have any attractions planned for after 2022, aside from the Splash Mountain remake? I can't think of any that have been even rumored, can you?

I just found this Tweet from last week, that has this photo of a planning document for Lake Nona. I would imagine the "Dynamic Campus LLC" area around the lagoon is the secretive property buy for the new WDI Campus. The cubicle army for Consumer Products and such is next door in the more mundane office park, as seen on this map.

You know, they're going to have to make it very enticing for Imagineers to move to Florida. I imagine they could make a built-from-scratch WDI campus very attractive and fun to work in with this plot of land. It could really be something special, if they wanted it to be.

 

[JustAFan]

You know, they're going to have to make it very enticing for Imagineers to move to Florida.

Lower cost of living and no income tax will help the sales pitch. The same salary goes farther in Florida than California.

 

[TP2000]

Lower cost of living and no income tax will help the sales pitch. The same salary goes farther in Florida than California.

True. And there's a lot of the younger Imagineers that will jump at that and be happy about it.

But the more tenured folks, further up the totem pole and payscale, won't be so quick to move. They're going to lose some folks, but I imagine they factored that into this business equation already.

I just hadn't thought of what a built-from-scratch WDI campus could look like in the 21st century. It could really be stunning and inspiring and... cool.

The current Glendale campus is nice, but it's a hodgepodge of 1960's office buildings, some random old warehouses, and literally a former bowling alley converted to offices, all spread across about five or six city blocks that aren't entirely connected. It's pleasant enough, but not anything special or unique.

Is it a bank? Insurance office? Dental offices? No, it's Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale!

I would hope that part of this proposal to move WDI out of California is that they get a really stunning place to work in and to create in. They've got a blank slate here. It should be something entirely unlike all the usual suburban office parks out there in America.

They could go really mod, really wow. With pavilions for different design disciplines and business centers for different teams built around that lagoon. Literally a modern dream factory.