Well, where should I start. I read a very interesting article which involved Shad Kahn and our Jacksonville Jaguars. To get to the point, this city has always been known as 'back woods' 'good ole bays club' and on and on. Fact, Jacksonville has always shot itself in the foot when it comes to growth. As a young kid growing up in this 'town', and I use the word 'town' because that is what it still is, had a great opportunity to land what, at the time, was a long shot. We could have had a mega-giant in out back yard. Known by his name as Walt Disney. We blew that chance because our small town country boys who ran this government at the time said "NO". Disney wanted to build his park here. Use one of our great assets, our waterways to bring in cruise-lines loaded with tourists and money, build a state of the art airport for international flyers and make Jacksonville one of the prime places for visitors.
You now see what kind of income is generated in Orlando now. We have, and have always had, better resources than they could have possibly offered. The ocean, our river and location to other large hubs, Atlanta, Miami, and straight flights from Europe. The excuse used at the time, 'they will ruin our river', 'they will ruin our beach', 'our property values will go down'. On and on and on, not thinking that you use the income brought in to clean up what is damaged. Hello that is what other cities do across the nation today. Well I've been to Orlando many times, they seem to be doing quite well.
So that is my first take on this city needs to do to stop being labeled 'Small Town Jax'. We are the after thought when it comes to events coming to Florida . We need new development and it must start with downtown, around the football stadium and our city leaders need to step up and act.
Mr. Kahn, if you mean what you say, develop the shipyards, make it an attractive area to come, and or city leaders need to take chances once in a while. Hold more meetings around the city, listen to input from citizens and utilize what this area truly has to offer. 8)
Welcome to the forum, Drew.
No argument about the small town mindset, but the Disney thing just isn't true. While the "Disney in Jax" legend has been propagated by some locals in the last several years (including by folks on this forum), it's totally apocryphal. There's no evidence Walt Disney ever seriously considered putting a park in Jacksonville. And there's certainly no evidence he ever planned to run cruise lines here or build an airport (Disney didn't even build the Orlando airport). I, for one, ain't made about that.
Quote from: stephendare on April 29, 2014, 01:04:05 PM
Quote from: Tacachale on April 29, 2014, 01:00:49 PM
Welcome to the forum, Drew.
No argument about the small town mindset, but the Disney thing just isn't true. While the "Disney in Jax" legend has been propagated by some locals in the last several years (including by folks on this forum), it's totally apocryphal. There's no evidence Walt Disney ever seriously considered putting a park in Jacksonville. And there's certainly no evidence he ever planned to run cruise lines here or build an airport (Disney didn't even build the Orlando airport). I, for one, ain't made about that.
other than first hand accounts of course. ;)
I've never found any of those, and believe me I've tried. The closest I've come is the memory of our own Ocklawaha, which, in my understanding, may have been a little... subject to influence back in the 60s.
Quote from: stephendare on April 29, 2014, 01:11:06 PM
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/042407/bum_9411719.shtml
The only person denying the story was Ray Mason, who didnt have first hand connection to the story, and didnt actually deny that it happened.
QuoteWhether 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."
That gives the more usual version of the story, which is that Disney was after St. Joe's property in the Panhandle:
Quote
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.
And even there, the teller (Jerry Ray) says he can't corroborate that it's true, only that it's a well known story.
St Joe, the Balls & the duPonts owned a great portion of north Florida so the discussion could have been about any parcel or just wanted an investor.
What is known is that Disney's family pionnerred and lost their fortune in the 19th century with early experiments with dredging and cannaling Florida. I think they were of French distraction, came down post Civil War from Pennsylvania with the Disney family name of Disston (later changed to Disney)
Walt's father or grandfather ended up a small time farmer or something in rural Orange County, Florida. He eventurally became a socialist or something like that and moved to the mid-west where Walt was born and grew up.
Walt Disney has long been rumored to have friends in the CIA and their operations of secretly buying up large swatches of land that was more unprofitable orange groves and swamps in and around cattle ranches. Over time they secretly bought up the 27,000 whatever acres before the locals realized it who was buying it so they would not raise the price of their worthless farm into a fortune or be the lone hold out with a farm in what would become New Orleans Square (god, I wish Disneyworld had a New Orleans Square)
Disney was too smart and too ruthless to get local yopels to talk about his project to build Disneyworld.
Let's also remember what a sh!.h0l* Jacksonville was in the 1950s and 1960s.
The turpintine / papermills made the whole city reak. Tin-can tourists coming down US 1 or heading to Hwy 301 first noticed the stench after they crossed the Georgia/Florida border. Then they quickly sped out south of town as soon as possible.
Back then, there were trash/dumps all over the place with little to no regulation, rarely even hidden behind a grove of pine trees and never covered up. Flying over Jax you could see open trash/dumps all over the place.
Downtown Jax still had great department stores and hotels, though, it was surrounded by notorious white slums and black slums, segreated of course. There were gamblibing halls and all kinds of sailor bars and other places of ill repute in a Mayberry America.
This town was a hotbed of racism, probably much worse than Orange County, Florida was back then.
Our downtown piers and warehouses were litterly rotting in the water.
Disney built Main Street U.S.A, New Orlease Square and the City of Tomorrow - land in rural areas, not city centers.
Disneyland was originally built in a very rural part of Orange County, CA but quickly (partially thanks to Disneyland) became an over crowded suburb and he could no longer expand his park or find enough space for destination resort hotels. This is another reason why he probably would never of placed Disneyworld anywhere near Jacksonville, Tampa or Miami.
Back in the 1960s & early 70s, Orlando was a boring little tourist town that made their biggest tourist push by smelling orange blossoms. While that alone was enough to create a small tourist haven during the 1910s to the 30s, by the 1960s, tourists wanted more than just hang by a pool (a pool back them was for only the rich unless yo uwent to a roadside motel which charged more if there was a pool) and the scent of orange blossoms.
Disney bought up so much land that he never thought he'd run out of room. I guess even Walt never truely understood the power of Disney.
Not to mention, while Orlando does get cold and freeze during winter, it does not nearly as much or as bad as northeast Florida.
Quote from: stephendare on April 29, 2014, 01:20:37 PM
"senior vice president of communications and raconteur for The St. Joe Co."
Its not like he didnt have access to the inside story you know... ;)
Sure, but he's clear he can't corroborate the story (which, again, is the Panhandle version):
Quote
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.
...
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."
I've had family members in Jacksonville since the 30s (some of whom worked for Ed Ball, btw) and I've never heard anyone say anything about Disney locating in Jacksonville.
I do remember there being talk of Anheuser-Busch building a Busch Gardens-type place at their Northside brewery. Obviously, that never happened.
While the Disney waiting outside all day for Ball may have been true, but is it historically accurate?
At this time, Disney was a huge person in the entertainment industry. He would have recognized the brush off long prior to waiting all day.
Disney was Hollywood "royalty" not some B-actor smuck or some guy with a dubious production company.
Wouldn't Disney had his secretary call up and make an appointment first? Would a gentlemen like Ed Ball accept an appointment which somebody that he would have consiered an carnival barker?
we are also thinking of the era in Jacksonville before most office buidlings had air conditioning. Doors would have been opened. Ball probably would have gone to one of the downtown lunch clubs for lunch, not hide in his office too afraid that a carnival barker would see him.
I have no doubt that rumors were spread a very long time ago by people in the know trying to make themselves look important or somebody overhead a head honcho make a joke and then the joke turned into a rumor and spread.
It just does not seem plausbile that Disney would make a cold call to a guy who was not receptive to seeing him.
Disney had a CIA type operation buying up central Florida, I think that Disney would have been smarter than that.
Though, I could be entertained that Ball may have left some Disney underling waiting outside his office all day.
My grandfather was Disney's first head of hotels and restaurants, created their initial hotel plans, and opened and managed The Contemporary and Polynesian resorts before jumping ship to Playboy Hotels. He came on board after the initial land acquisition, but I'm sure knew about the history of it. Unfortunately, he passed away a long, long time ago, but I just texted my Dad to see if he knows anything about them looking at Jax before Orlando. Doubtful that he knows, but I'll share if he says anything.
I do know that Disney's land acquisitions in Orlando were top, top secret in order to keep prices down, like Bold New Boy described...so it is possible that nobody would even know if Disney had truly looked at land in Jax.
It's very likely Disney did look in Jacksonville, but only as one of many places he looked at but ultimately rejected before going with the Reedy Creek site. In 1959, Panhandle newspapers (http://books.google.com/books?id=rEIw_sNZh8YC&pg=PA71&dq=%22Wakulla+Springs%22+Disney&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gvJfU9L-JeHgsATg74LgCw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Wakulla%20Springs%22%20Disney&f=false) wrote that Disney was supposedly looking in West Florida, specifically Wakulla Springs. Wakulla was owned by St. Joe and was much loved by Ed Ball. Presumably this is the source of the "carnival people" story, whether it's true or not.
Whatever happened with Wakulla, it must have been abandoned pretty quickly, as later in 1959 Disney had Harrison "Buzz" Price (http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/BUZ) investigate sites in Palm Beach County (https://digitalcollections.net.ucf.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/BUZ/id/9544/rec/6) for his "City of Tomorrow" concept. Disney didn't want to build just a theme park, but an "Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow" for at least 10,000 people. Only the theme park (the current Magic Kingdom) was built during his lifetime; the planned community was abandoned when he died, with some ideas incorporated into a second park, EPCOT.
Disney ultimately rejected Palm Beach County as it was difficult to get the amount of land he had in mind, it was too close to a city, and there would be too much competition with the beach. All three of those things would also have been true of Jacksonville, so it's unlikely any plans for Jacksonville, if there were any, got much past the exploratory stage.
Disney continued looking at sites around Florida and elsewhere for the next few years. Finally in 1964 the company made its big push to find land. By that time they had ruled out any site north of Daytona and south of Palm Beach, and anything near the coasts. From that point, most sites they looked at were in inland Central Florida, and they ultimately settled on the Reedy Creek site, which they purchased under the aforementioned veil of secrecy.
Resident historian Tacachale. Very well put together.
^Thanks. I'm just filling in for Ock while he recuperates. ;)