Will Jacksonville ever...

[Wacca Pilatka]

It is true that Walt Disney talked to business leaders in St. Louis, but they balked at Disney's insistence that a theme park be free of alcoholic beverages.

Yes, it has been widely reported that this was a dispute with the Busch family directly.

[Ocklawaha]

Disney did indeed attempt a contact in Jacksonville, St. Joe Corporation, which owned tens of thousands of acres both near and far in Florida. While I don't think we'll ever know the full vision that was floating around in Walt's mind on the March 1959 day he came to Jacksonville to meet with ED BALL. Could have been NW Jax, or St. Johns or Nassau? Could have been the panhandle? What if Ball had stepped up and suggested Jacksonville? What if we offered Walt the red carpet tour? Disneys message was no doubt something to the tune of "I would like to meet with you to consider property purchase for a future project..."  Ball stood Disney up and never came to the 9AM meeting at the St. Joe headquarters, in fact Disney stayed all day and St. Joe fed him lunch while he waited and waited and waited. Finally at the end of the day the secretary was called in and returned with a note for Mr. Disney.

TO WALT DISNEY:

WALT, I DON'T WANT TO MEET WITH YOU, JACKSONVILLE DOESN'T DEAL WITH CARNIVAL PEOPLE.

ED BALL

Our fate was sealed, Orlando, Tampa, West Palm, Fort Lauderdale and Miami would all experience unprecedented booms of flashy developments, tourism, population, amenities, resorts and infrastructure and we'd forever more drive the delivery trucks.

Maybe we could hang out a sign, Walt Disney ate here... But then the place where the secretary bought the lunch is probably torn down!

http://www.dapsmagic.com/disneynews/disneynewsarticle.php?id=5311

OCKLAWAHA

[cityimrov]

Disney did indeed attempt a contact in Jacksonville, St. Joe Corporation, which owned tens of thousands of acres both near and far in Florida. While I don't think we'll ever know the full vision that was floating around in Walt's mind on the March 1959 day he came to Jacksonville to meet with ED BALL. Could have been NW Jax, or St. Johns or Nassau? Could have been the panhandle? What if Ball had stepped up and suggested Jacksonville? What if we offered Walt the red carpet tour? Disneys message was no doubt something to the tune of "I would like to meet with you to consider property purchase for a future project..."  Ball stood Disney up and never came to the 9AM meeting at the St. Joe headquarters, in fact Disney stayed all day and St. Joe fed him lunch while he waited and waited and waited. Finally at the end of the day the secretary was called in and returned with a note for Mr. Disney.

TO WALT DISNEY:

WALT, I DON'T WANT TO MEET WITH YOU, JACKSONVILLE DOESN'T DEAL WITH CARNIVAL PEOPLE.

ED BALL

Our fate was sealed, Orlando, Tampa, West Palm, Fort Lauderdale and Miami would all experience unprecedented booms of flashy developments, tourism, population, amenities, resorts and infrastructure and we'd forever more drive the delivery trucks.

Maybe we could hang out a sign, Walt Disney ate here... But then the place where the secretary bought the lunch is probably torn down!


OCKLAWAHA

Maybe this was a blessing in disguise.  If you think about it, Disney would have brought in billions of dollars of projects.  These dollars would have then propped up and supported the Jacksonville government.  Imagine giving our city politicians and extra billion or two dollars.  Imagine what kind of fun city they would design with all that money!  I'd imagine with all that money, there would not be a single historic building left in this city based on Jacksonville's history.  Add racial segregation and I don't want to imagine what they would have come up with. 

Well, this is supposing if Disney would have been a success in Jacksonville vs the Orlando Area.  If Ed Ball really had a bad view of Disney just buying land, imagine his view on the creation of Reedy Creek and it's total independence of the local government.

[danno]

My Mother, God rest her soul, was the receptionist for Ed Ball up until 1964.  That story had been going around fro a long time, she always said that she never ever heard of Mr Disney paying a visit.

[Overstreet]

I don't like Orlando. It's personal. So Disney not coming to Jacksonville and turning it into Orlando is OK with me.

[Ocklawaha]

My Mother, God rest her soul, was the receptionist for Ed Ball up until 1964.  That story had been going around fro a long time, she always said that she never ever heard of Mr Disney paying a visit.

I was here at the time and seem to recall a buzz about a Disney visit. Maybe there was a TU or Journal article or perhaps just a photo of him stepping off a plane? The way the TU archives is, nobody will ever see it again if it is there. One of their people told me when they went digital, they "lost" a couple hundred thousand images...

Anyone else have a similar memory?


OCKLAWAHA

[Jaxson]

I had no problem getting the Times-Union to reprint a photo for me.  It was from 1950.

[Timkin]

Guess either way, it is for not , now.  Disney has obviously done well in its current location in Orlando.

If Mr.Ball actually DID turn down even having a conversation with Mr. Disney, I think that was pretty narrow-minded of him.    But if he did not do business with Carnival people, I cannot imagine him making the man wait for hours, or getting him lunch.  I do not see the point. I think it would have been a flat refusal for him to be invited at all , only to waste his time.  This obviously was before my time.   But I personally think Disney could have done tremendous things for this area, assuming they would have located anywhere nearby.  Guess it worked out as it was meant to work out.  And here we remain ,struggling, losing our fabric and Urban core, and a handful of City Management and their cronies, skimming a tidy profit off the suffering of the rest of us.   It isn't right.

[stjr]

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

Stephen, just a pet peeve of mine.  I think we should respect our sources and put quotes from others in the quote box with proper attribution and a link.  See my presentation of the same quote you made in this very thread, Post #42.  I also have a hard time telling your words from others when you do this and, given your excellent writing skills, you deserve credit, too, for your originality, versus the possible assumption you are quoting another.  Thanks.

[stjr]

Thanks man. The shifting nature of the various little sites and blogs often means that what you link to today will be gone tomorrow. 

I agree, and that is why I usually both "reprint" the story on MJ in quotes (so, if the link fails, you still have the quote)  and also give the link and/or source.  I believe in not just acknowledging source sites, but also supporting and "thanking" them with the hopeful reward of a few extra web hits and/or referrals from here when I add their link.  Our support may also insure they will be there to generate future source material for us. 

[Timkin]

I think you'd be beating yourself up to call yourself lazy, Stephen

[Ocklawaha]

+1

OCKLAWAHA

[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

From the NY Times, an interesting obituary on the man who helped Disney determine where to locate its theme parks.  It implies it was a pretty scientific/objective process that led to Orlando so it makes one wonder if Jax really was in the running.

August 21, 2010
Harrison Price, a Planner of Disney Parks, Dies at 89
By MARGALIT FOX

Harrison Price, an internationally known research economist who told the developers of the world’s most famous theme parks where to situate them â€" in the process putting Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., and Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. â€" died on Aug. 15 in Pomona, Calif. He was 89.

Mr. Price, a Pomona resident, died of chronic anemia, his son David said.

Trained in economics and engineering, Mr. Price was a founder and very likely the best-known practitioner of the enterprise sometimes called leisure-time economic analysis.

The field, which straddles entertainment, economics, sociology, real estate, time-and-motion studies, architecture and planning, was born at midcentury, when developers of outdoor amusements began seeking the most profitable means of pulling people away from the television and out of the house.

For five decades, Mr. Price was a sought-after independent consultant to the makers of theme parks, amusement parks, zoos, museums and other large-scale spectacles. It is widely agreed that his work helped shape significantly the landscape of postwar American amusement.

In 1999, the entertainment trade publication Variety called Mr. Price “the dean of recreation economics.”

Besides the Walt Disney Company his clients included SeaWorld, Knott’s Berry Farm, the Six Flags amusement park chain and many World’s Fairs.

Mr. Price was a professional measurer. In thousands of studies, he calibrated factors like geography, demographics, weather and traffic patterns to help clients answer two vital questions: If we build it, will they come? and If they come, how many of them will there be?

To analyze his data, Mr. Price devised a set of algorithms he called “roller-coaster math.” Among the things he would quantify, for instance, was the length of time patrons might stand in line to board an amusement park ride.

“If people are waiting around too long, you’re not going to be profitable,” he told The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, Calif., in 2004. “But if they’re going through the park too fast, that’s also not good.”

Mr. Price was best known for his work for Disney, for which he produced more than 150 feasibility, marketing and site-selection studies. His association with the company began in 1953, after Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney consulted him about the best place to erect a family-oriented theme park, to be known as Disneyland.

At the time, Mr. Price was on the staff of the Stanford Research Institute, a business consultancy. Weighing several Southern California locations, he determined that Anaheim, then a largely rural place of citrus groves, would be the most temperate, accessible and, above all, profitable.

The Disney company acquired 160 acres there, and Disneyland opened in 1955.

“Walt was a dreamer, but he had a very workmanlike curiosity about how things functioned, and whether what he was talking about would actually work,” Mr. Price said in the Desert Sun interview.

At Walt Disney’s urging, Mr. Price founded his own consultancy, Economics Research Associates, in 1958. He sold the business in 1969; in 1978 he founded the Harrison Price Company, which he closed on his retirement in 2005.

Harrison Alan Price, familiarly known as Buzz, was born on May 17, 1921, in Oregon City, Ore., and reared in Southern California. As a child, he later said, he was a “numbers geek,” the kind of boy who kept a careful tally of the number of times he played each phonograph record in his collection.

Mr. Price received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1942. After Army service in World War II, he earned an M.B.A. from Stanford in 1951.

Besides his son David, Mr. Price is survived by his wife, Anne Shaw Price, whom he married in 1944; another son, Bret; two daughters, Dana Price and Holly Shaw Ristuccia; a sister, Patricia Scott Mannarino; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

He was the author of a business memoir, “Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers” (Ripley Entertainment, 2004).

Other projects on which Mr. Price consulted include the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans. For Disney, he helped choose the location of Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in 1983 in Chiba, Japan.

He also oversaw the creation of the California Institute of the Arts, a project of Walt Disney’s that Mr. Price helped shepherd into being after Mr. Disney’s death in 1966.

In his long career, Mr. Price made one strategic decision that, it is safe to assume, has earned him the deep retrospective gratitude of Gotham.

In the 1960s, wishing to build a theme park on the East Coast, Disney commissioned Mr. Price to find a suitable location. Among the sites he considered for the new park, to be called Walt Disney World, were Orlando, Fla., and New York City.

Mr. Price ran his numbers and chose Orlando.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22price.html?hpw