Will Jacksonville ever...

[WillNevaLeaveJAX]

I heard that Disney offered Jacksonville first but the mayor at the time declined... is there any truth to that?

[Timkin]

I would have no way of knowing, but my best guess is , there is absolutely no truth to that.

[Timkin]

That by the way would have been Mayor Hans Tanzler , no?

[keywest09]

 Not until you takes pride in it's past, present, and future.  You wanted the NFL you got to take pride in it and support it!  Remember you got to put out the big bucks to get a return in something.  Most people don't want that.  They just expect it to come.  Build on what you have and the rest will come.  Just remember take pride in the city and others will follow!!!   You want to be a Great City it mean you got to pay for it. In todays world not all things are FREE!!!

[Noone]

Since Ock is the resident train Specialist......  Ock, I'd like your thoughts on Adam St. Station and the 25 railroad cars sitting under an FDOT overpass.  How should it move forward? 

[Noone]

I butchered the quote. Sorry Timkin

[simms3]

Aside from the parks in Orlando and Cali (and Cedar Point), theme parks have been losing their parent companies millions of dollars for several years now and to build one requires hundreds of millions of dollars.  To build one without a movie company or world's largest beer company backing it (and Six Flags will not build a new once since they have had financial struggles for years and even went to bankruptcy) would require a Blackstone, or KKR, or some major PE firm.  Jax simply has a hard time attracting that kind of money for many many reasons even though it is easy to do business here and we give out incentives.

People went south to Miami not because Jax stunk, but because Miami was further south.  It is tropical down there and practically the farthest south you can get.  That will always give Miami a leg up on Jax and we cannot help that.

Jax needs to remain the business capital of Florida and like it or not, the family town of Florida.  Notice how Orlando has tried to stake itself as the family town in the state (because of Disney).  That city realizes that our country and the south especially is an area where families dominate and bring in more tax revenue than singles.  I think we are continuing to make strides to boost our medical tourism and local hospitals and grow our finance and insurance business here.  We have lobbied to keep a larger military presence in the absence of the JFK.

Overall, aside from a lack of leadership in revitalizing downtown (and some stupid remarks by stupid city council leaders), political and business leaders here in Jacksonville have done a pretty good job of keeping our economy diverse and our identity, small though it is, has remained separate from the other FL cities and unique.

Aside from Orlando, Jax metro has the overall highest growth rate in FL, at least 0.5% higher annual growth than Tampa and well over twice as fast as S FL.  Orlando has its own problems of crime (seems worse there than here), traffic, transience, etc.  S FL has its obvious load of problems and will never be a good place to raise a family when compared to Jacksonville; and Tampa, while similar to Jax, is uglier, has a much worse layout, much worse traffic, and a whole set of unique problems in Pinellas county, which probably has the poorest retirees I have ever seen and a crazier church than FBC controlling politics and RE in Clearwater.  That church is scientology.

[Timkin]

I butchered the quote. Sorry Timkin

NP  nobodys paying any attention to my stuff anywho

[CS Foltz]

Tim..............your just a non-entity taxpaying person...............just like the rest of us big guy! I figure if the herd gets larger, sooner or later, them thats be will take notice! They won't have much of a choice in it!

[Timkin]

Thx CS.

[stjr]

To build one without a movie company or world's largest beer company backing it (and Six Flags will not build a new once since they have had financial struggles for years and even went to bankruptcy) would require a Blackstone, or KKR, or some major PE firm.

FYI, Blackstone recently bought the Anheuser Busch theme parks (Busch Gardens and Seaworld brands).  They also co-own Universal Orlando with NBC and via Merlin Entertainment,  Madame Tussauds wax museums and Legoland.  They are now only second to Disney in the theme park business.

Excerpt from pre-A-B acquisition announcement article from last year:

Shamu, meet your new boss: Stephen Schwarzman.

Blackstone Group LP, the New York private-equity firm headed by Mr. Schwarzman, is nearing a roughly $2.5 billion to $3 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV's theme parks, according to people familiar with the situation.

The sale of the Busch Entertainment unit, which owns the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks, has been expected as part of InBev's plans to pay for its 2008 acquisition of Anheuser-Busch.

The deal could be announced as soon as the coming week, but still might fall apart, the people familiar with the matter said.

An Anheuser-Busch InBev spokeswoman declined to comment.

If completed, the purchase would add to Blackstone's theme-park holdings. The buyout shop already controls Merlin Entertainment Group, the owner of Madame Tussauds wax museums and Legoland. It also holds a 50% stake in Universal Orlando theme parks.

Blackstone would be acquiring 10 amusement parks located throughout the U.S., from SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla., to Sesame Place in Langhorne, Pa. Among SeaWorld's more famous attractions is the Shamu show, named after the park's iconic Orca whale.

In 2007, the Busch Entertainment division posted $162.9 million in income on $1.3 billion in sales. Under InBev, the company no longer breaks out financial results from the unit.

The theme parks employed about 10,300 temporary workers on average each month in 2008, according to a recent Anheuser-Busch InBev regulatory filing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125451372825260227.html

[Timkin]

Not shocked at all to learn this.  I WAS shocked when InBev acquired  AB.

[stjr]

I heard that Disney offered Jacksonville first but the mayor at the time declined... is there any truth to that?

This rumor has circulated for years.  Below is an investigaton by the Florida T-U.  Supposedly, Ed Ball nixed the idea by refusing to meet with Walt Disney.  I don't think anyone has been able to prove or disprove it.  At a minimum, it's a local favorite "urban myth".  

Published Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Was Duval a crossroads for Disney?

By KAREN BRUNE MATHIS
The Times-Union,

Walt Disney's future might have turned south in downtown Jacksonville.

Whether folklore, true story or a bit of both, the tale was told last week to more than 700 shopping center executives from across the country who met in Ponte Vedra.

Jerry Ray, senior vice president of communications and raconteur for The St. Joe Co., wove the narrative and added more on Monday. Here goes.

It was 1959. Legendary financier Ed Ball ran the St. Joe Paper Co., which owned more than a million acres, the majority of it in Northwest Florida. The land had been acquired by Ball's late brother-in-law, industrialist Alfred I. duPont.

After Disneyland opened in 1955 in California, the visionary Walt Disney turned his sights for a new park elsewhere, including Northwest Florida.

Disney and his lawyers, lobbyists and friends tried unsuccessfully to reach Ball, who turned them down. In a last ditch effort, Disney made an appointment in March 1959 to meet Ball, a tough businessman, at Ball's Jacksonville office.

Disney arrived at 9 a.m. to quiet offices, whose silence was broken only by a ticking clock.

Ball's secretary, Irene Walsh, told Disney that Ball would like for him to wait. Each hour, Walsh would take stock orders in to Ball's office, returning with the same message. "He's busy."

At noon, she told Disney that "Mr. Ball would like for me to go out and get you lunch."

The afternoon passed and she continued taking stock orders in to Ball. After the last report, she returned to Disney with a note, folded eight times.

"Mr. Disney, I'm not going to see you. I don't do business with carnival people."

As we know, Disney bought almost 27,500 acres in Central Florida and announced Walt Disney World in 1965. The resort grew to 30,500 acres, according to Disney World Trivia.

"That's what you call a crossroads of history," Ray told the International Council of Shopping Centers group. "Mr. Disney's first choice was Panama City Beach."

What a story!

It might be just that. I ran the short version past Raymond K. Mason Sr., a friend and business associate of Ball. Mason published a Ball biography in 1976.

"I have heard the story attributed to Mr. Ball before, but he was very polite and would have been delighted to meet Mr. Disney, so I do not believe that ever happened. I think somebody just being smart probably made it up," Mason e-mailed me.

Ray says the story might be just that, but a lot of people are telling it. Versions ran in The New York Times in 1998, The Miami Herald in 2001 and both the Orlando Sentinel and Fortune magazine in 2005. The Orange County Regional History Center found a reference to it as "company lore" in a 2004 book, Green Empire, The St. Joe Company and the Remaking of Florida's Panhandle.

Peter Rummell, St. Joe's chairman since 1997, was not available for comment Monday about the story or the coincidence that he came to the job after 11 years with Disney in design and development.

St. Joe still farms but also is developing its land - about 800,000 acres today - into communities and resorts. Ray says the company is in a much better position to do that now than it was back then.

Disney died in 1966 and Ball in 1981. Ray says he's talked with "scores" of people about the story, "but all of the people who were actually involved are, of course, long gone."

But the story? It won't be forgotten.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/042407/bum_165125931.shtml

[Timkin]

Can you imagine where we would be today IF Walt Disney actually DID propose this idea and the Mayor accepted?

[Jaxson]

I am not sure if Panama City Beach would have made the Disney short list, even with a Walt Disney and Ed Ball hit it off. 
The Orlando area is easily accessible via Interstate 4 from Interstate 75, Interstate 95 and also from Florida's Turnpike.  This location is a lot more accessible than Panama City Beach.
Speaking of legends surrouning Ed Ball, a friend of mine once told me that the Baptists vetoed the idea of a theme park in North Florida.  The speculation continues to swirl, doesn't it?