When did it all go wrong?

[Tacachale]

Ock, you've mentioned several times recently that the city somehow chased Walt Disney away from building Disney World here. That didn't happen. I doubt it happened with Busch Gardens either.

Not that Disney World is really something to envy to begin with.

According to Ball's long time secretary it did happen.  According to Raymond Mason, his biographical apologist and booster, it didn't.

I'd go with the secretary.

PS.  It wasn't "The City" per se, but rather Ed Ball, who ran the city.

Disney wanted to purchase significant acreage from Ball that had been laid waste by the St. Joe's Paper Company.  Ball refused in such a way that Disney went south.

Actually, it's not clear that Ball's secretary really did say that. She isn't mentioned in most of the versions that have circulated since the the 1990s. A 2007 Times-Union article that mentions her doesn't quote her directly.

At any rate, the story doesn't claim that Disney was looking in Jacksonville or that Bell spoke for Jacksonville. According to the various versions, for instance this one, Disney tried to meet Ball to look into Panhandle, where St. Joe had most of their land. Supposedly Ball told him "I don't do business with carnival people" and refused to see him, so the Panhandle missed a chance (or dodged a bullet) to have Disney World built there.

Regardless of this little story, it's likely that Disney did check out both the Panhandle and the Jacksonville area, but if he did they would have been only some of the very many locations around the state (and the country) he investigated and rejected before deciding on the Reedy Creek site.

Perhaps this should be its own thread.

Orlando was a tiny citrus town before disney opened up miles away from the city.  Im not sure anyone would challenge the idea that Orlando became a city based on the economic growth of Disney.

The land was a bit more towards the west and north of Jacksonville, but with the rail connections of the time, and the highway array, Jacksonville would have been the beneficiary of the establishment of Disney in North Florida.

How much power did this Ed Ball guy have back then?  This looks like strike one in terms of our private leadership failing.  While Disney may or may have not chosen the Jacksonville area to build Disney World, Jacksonville could have had a much better relationship that Disney wanted to build something here.  Even a small Disney exhibit on I-95 to prep everyone before they reach Disney World.   It would have been a boom to Jacksonville's non-existent tourist industry. 

"This Ed Ball guy" was very powerful. The St. Joe company was (and is) one of the largest and most influential landholders in the state.

You're assuming that a development like Disney World is inherently positive. I would argue that it's not.

Despite constant political chatter about Jacksonville's unfulfilled potential, I'm still not quite sure I've ever seen a truly great master plan detailing a) what the city's long term goals are and b) how to get there.

Giant master plans are usually a bad idea.  It causes people  to stick with them even when they become obsolete.  Orlando didn't know what Disney was.  I'm betting half of the most successful areas in our world had no master plan to go on.  It just requires some risk and a lot of uncertainty.

Orlando certainly did know what Disney was, and moreover, Disney chose their current site specifically because local leaders had built up an environment that was attractive to them.

For over 10 years beforehand, Central Florida businessmen and politicians lobbied hard to get highways built through their area to stimulate growth, and they pushed the state to deregulate, particularly on environmental concerns. Disney was very interested in those things, so they chose Reedy Creek over other sites. It's a classic case of master planning in action.

[cityimrov]

Master plans tied to goals and direction are usually a good thing.  All the best universities have master plans that are updated every 5-10 years.  Many if not most of the best neighborhoods in the country have master plans updated on a similar basis.  Cities do, too.  I think the key is to tie a plan to goals rather than have an isolated floating plan based on disconnected ideas...and then obviously the next step would be implementation.  I think where Jacksonville has failed is both in tying plans to specific short and long term goals that transcend time periods and very clearly the city has failed to implement anything practical in a very long time.

In my opinion the best planning in NE FL takes place at UNF.  I suggest going over its master plans and seeing what they have done over the decades to get to where they are.

For doing things which have been done for centuries, master plans are a good thing.  University building construction is a very predictable thing since most of them just try to copy each other.  All universities know they are going to add a bigger library.  Master planning works for predictable status quo projects.  Master planning fails badly on unpredictable projects. 

Disney World was not a status quo project.  Things that propel an area into world leadership were never status quo until they got there.  The people in the area just learn to adapt to new things more quickly.  Orlando is faster than Jacksonville to adapt to new things but even Orlando is slow compared to some cities around the world which is changing every day. 

Disney helped Orlando but I would say NASA helped Orlando even more.  That is something Jacksonville never paid attention too (unless someone uncovers an article showing me how much Jacksonville fought for NASA work).

[cityimrov]

PS.  It wasn't "The City" per se, but rather Ed Ball, who ran the city.

What was Ed Ball's "master plan" for the city?  Let's say the Disney story was true.  If it was, that must means mean he had some other scheme in mind for Jacksonville (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt) that was a better opportunity than Disney.  What was that?  Did the people in the city follow him around like a pied piper?  The artists who were in town.  The businessmen.  What did they do during that time? 

[Timkin]

I guess from here the question ( Or perhaps a new thread topic ) should be:


How do we turn this mess around? 


We can lay blame on past administrations till all of us are in our graves. 


How do we undo WHAT CAN BE undone?

[Elwood]

Exactly. The focus shouldn't be to continue to compile lists of all the things we as a city have done wrong, or who we can blame. What's done is done. Learn from those mistakes, yes. But, there are way too many intelligent, focused people on this site, and in the city in general to make "excuses". Jacksonville can be everything we want and more.

[Timkin]

Some of the backwardness continues ( I think most of us realize this ) .


How do we change this way of thinking and make progress ?  Find a happy medium for all ?. Is it possible?

[Tacachale]

Master plans tied to goals and direction are usually a good thing.  All the best universities have master plans that are updated every 5-10 years.  Many if not most of the best neighborhoods in the country have master plans updated on a similar basis.  Cities do, too.  I think the key is to tie a plan to goals rather than have an isolated floating plan based on disconnected ideas...and then obviously the next step would be implementation.  I think where Jacksonville has failed is both in tying plans to specific short and long term goals that transcend time periods and very clearly the city has failed to implement anything practical in a very long time.

In my opinion the best planning in NE FL takes place at UNF.  I suggest going over its master plans and seeing what they have done over the decades to get to where they are.

For doing things which have been done for centuries, master plans are a good thing.  University building construction is a very predictable thing since most of them just try to copy each other.  All universities know they are going to add a bigger library.  Master planning works for predictable status quo projects.  Master planning fails badly on unpredictable projects. 

Disney World was not a status quo project.  Things that propel an area into world leadership were never status quo until they got there.  The people in the area just learn to adapt to new things more quickly.  Orlando is faster than Jacksonville to adapt to new things but even Orlando is slow compared to some cities around the world which is changing every day. 

Disney helped Orlando but I would say NASA helped Orlando even more.  That is something Jacksonville never paid attention too (unless someone uncovers an article showing me how much Jacksonville fought for NASA work).

LOL, Orlando has very little to do with NASA, whose Florida operations are an hour away on the coast. You clearly don't know much about master plans.

[cityimrov]

LOL, Orlando has very little to do with NASA, whose Florida operations are an hour away on the coast. You clearly don't know much about master plans.

I disagree.

Exactly. The focus shouldn't be to continue to compile lists of all the things we as a city have done wrong,

It's impossible to learn from the past if you don't know what mistakes were made.  We have to know what mistakes were made so we can not do it again or do the mistake with some good reason to repeat that mistake.

or who we can blame.

You can learn from mistakes without blaming anyone.  Everyone makes mistakes.  The blame game is a waste of time.  Yes, there are areas out there who spend all day talking about there mistakes but don't blame each other.  The learn from it and become leaders in their field. 

[Ocklawaha]

LOL, Orlando has very little to do with NASA, whose Florida operations are an hour away on the coast. You clearly don't know much about master plans.

I disagree.

...And I agree to your disagreement CityImprov! Few seem to know that the NASA/USAF/DEFENSE DEPT footprint in Orlando,'s private sector is HUGE. in fact only 3 theme parks and 2 regional hospitals have more employees.
Lockheed Martin's Business Line: Combat Systems
Number of Employees..................................................... 7,200
These are located in a massive campus just south of Sand Lake Road and immediately off the 'Beach Line Turnpike'.

On another note, there were rumors recently that the new 'airship' the P-791 or a 'sister ship' otherwise unknown was seen off the coast at Cape Canaveral AFB/NASA. Interesting stuff. Meanwhile over at the Cape Canaveral 'plant' the first Lockheed Martin built Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geosynchronous (GEO-1) satellite, launched on May 7, 2011, is exceeding performance expectations and is on schedule to achieve operational certification later this year.

That new railroad between Orlando and the coast? Your kidding yourself if you think it's about passengers and passenger train profits. Something big is in the wind and Port Canaveral, NASA, Lockheed-Martin, Cape Canaveral AFB, Orlando - Cocoa, Flagler/FECI, are all in it up to their boxcar doors! The Beach Line is in fact Florida's version of Silicon Valley or Research Triangle.

Lockheed-Martin Orlando Research Facility

[Ocklawaha]

Actually, it's not clear that Ball's secretary really did say that. She isn't mentioned in most of the versions that have circulated since the the 1990s. A 2007 Times-Union article that mentions her doesn't quote her directly.

At any rate, the story doesn't claim that Disney was looking in Jacksonville or that Bell spoke for Jacksonville. According to the various versions, for instance this one, Disney tried to meet Ball to look into Panhandle, where St. Joe had most of their land. Supposedly Ball told him "I don't do business with carnival people" and refused to see him, so the Panhandle missed a chance (or dodged a bullet) to have Disney World built there.

Regardless of this little story, it's likely that Disney did check out both the Panhandle and the Jacksonville area, but if he did they would have been only some of the very many locations around the state (and the country) he investigated and rejected before deciding on the Reedy Creek site.

Perhaps this should be its own thread.

Not that memory generally accounts for much, but I WAS HERE, when Walt Disney came to town. I can remember it being the buzz conversation of every civic minded adult I came into contact with, including teachers over at Ortega and JNC Stockton schools. The city was giddy but Ball wasn't, in fact I understand he refused to even meet Disney, passing him a note instead that read simply, 'Mr. Disney, Jacksonville doesn't deal with carnival people.'

Now one can appeal to the books and the biographers if one desires, but we lost and our role has quickly faded from the public memory. Maybe it is better that in time, our children's, children won't have a clue how stupid leaders of Jacksonville have been, past, present and... oh God No!

As for the usual story of his interest being only in land around the Panhandle, that is well publicized but his correspondence and apparent conversations with massive land owners in Clay and St. Johns seem to be lost. I ran into another old timer the other day in Green Cove Springs and we were talking about this when she popped up with the guys name and damn if I can remember it now, but if I do, I'll post it.

OCKLAWAHA

[Tacachale]

Actually, it's not clear that Ball's secretary really did say that. She isn't mentioned in most of the versions that have circulated since the the 1990s. A 2007 Times-Union article that mentions her doesn't quote her directly.

At any rate, the story doesn't claim that Disney was looking in Jacksonville or that Bell spoke for Jacksonville. According to the various versions, for instance this one, Disney tried to meet Ball to look into Panhandle, where St. Joe had most of their land. Supposedly Ball told him "I don't do business with carnival people" and refused to see him, so the Panhandle missed a chance (or dodged a bullet) to have Disney World built there.

Regardless of this little story, it's likely that Disney did check out both the Panhandle and the Jacksonville area, but if he did they would have been only some of the very many locations around the state (and the country) he investigated and rejected before deciding on the Reedy Creek site.

Perhaps this should be its own thread.

Not that memory generally accounts for much, but I WAS HERE, when Walt Disney came to town. I can remember it being the buzz conversation of every civic minded adult I came into contact with, including teachers over at Ortega and JNC Stockton schools. The city was giddy but Ball wasn't, in fact I understand he refused to even meet Disney, passing him a note instead that read simply, 'Mr. Disney, Jacksonville doesn't deal with carnival people.'

Now one can appeal to the books and the biographers if one desires, but we lost and our role has quickly faded from the public memory. Maybe it is better that in time, our children's, children won't have a clue how stupid leaders of Jacksonville have been, past, present and... oh God No!

As for the usual story of his interest being only in land around the Panhandle, that is well publicized but his correspondence and apparent conversations with massive land owners in Clay and St. Johns seem to be lost. I ran into another old timer the other day in Green Cove Springs and we were talking about this when she popped up with the guys name and damn if I can remember it now, but if I do, I'll post it.

OCKLAWAHA

Please do. I'm very interested in the topic (clearly).

Every version I've heard or read, and they are legion, claims that ol' Uncle Walt was after St. Joe land in the Panhandle. The basic story's the same: supposedly Disney's first choice was a stretch out there, perhaps Ed Ball's personal stomping grounds at Wakulla Springs, and he personally came to the St. Joe headquarters in Jacksonville discuss it with Ball. Unimpressed, Ball kept him waiting, then dismissed him with a curt note that said, "I don't deal with carnival people".

The Jacksonville version sounds like some home cooking. At any rate I can assure you that folks in the Panhandle were equally all abuzz about the prospect of the Disney project being in their neck of the woods, and stories about it ran in several Panhandle papers in 1959. Indeed, folks were abuzz all over the state, including Ocala (one of Disney's personal favorite choices) Palm Beach (where they developed a fairly serious plan), and Orlando-Kissimmee, where they ended up building.

We'll know more about where exactly Disney looked later this year, when the Buzz Price papers at UCF become available to researchers. I think it's very likely that Disney did indeed investigate areas near Jacksonville, but only as one of the dozens of locations he looked at and rejected. If so, he had certainly rejected it by 1960, when he dropped the Palm Beach project and moved on to Central Florida.

[cityimrov]

I need to know something.  Was Ed Ball feared or was loved by the general public? 

[cityimrov]

I need to know something.  Was Ed Ball feared or was loved by the general public?

Both actually.  He was widely feared, and he drove many many groups of people out of town, but the group of business men with whom he  travelled were fiercely loyal

Was he hated by any of the public? 

If Ed Ball was as powerful as the history books say he was, I'm starting to see why Jacksonville's local government was so weak.  A strong local government would have gotten in the way of his agenda.  The local businessmen who were loyal to him wouldn't have liked that either.  He was their personal piggy bank.  A private man, not the government, was giving them money.  If it was the government that was giving them money, it was a government they controlled. 

For all the reverence this city has given him, he wasn't really a self-made millionaire.  It would be like if Bill Gates died and gave all his money to one of Jacksonville's highly controversial city council members (pick one, there's quite a few).  Someone who was just smart enough to not waste it but not great enough to make it on his own.  Not only that but this was a time when other places were growing.  If you had artistic talent, what would you do?  Fight Ed Ball and be miserable or move to California's growing creative industry and be welcomed with open arms?

Ed Ball is a major piece to the puzzle but with him comes another question.  Who were the ones willing to do his bidding? 

To add to that, what happened to the city when Ed Ball retired from power?  Logic suggests that the people who stayed behind would be desperate to find an Ed Ball replacement.

[Ocklawaha]

I actually met and talked with him along with Winn Thornton, when the two of them were Chairman and President respectively of the Florida East Coast Railway. Ball struck me as a modern day maverick or perhaps the last of the great robber barons of Americana.

'Confusion to the enemy...'

The title of the biography of Ed Ball is taken, we are told by the authors, from a toast that Mr. Ball would propose "each night," and we are further assured that although it was directed to an un-named enemy, it meant anyone that opposed Ed Ball.

Have you seen the well-to-do, Up and down Park Avenue, On that famous thoroughfare, With their noses in the air, High hats, and arrow collars, White spats, and lots of dollars, Spending every dime, For a wonderful time.

If you're blue and you don't know
where to go to why don't you go
where fashion sits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Different types who wear a day
coat pants with stripes and cutaway
coat perfect fits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
Come let's mix where Rockefellers
walk with sticks or um-ber-ellas
in their mitts
Puttin' on the Ritz

Such was Jacksonville's Ed Ball.

OCKLAWAHA

[BrooklynSouth]

In my opinion the best planning in NE FL takes place at UNF.  I suggest going over its master plans and seeing what they have done over the decades to get to where they are.

I agree -- UNF has been growing and could be a huge shaper of Jacksonville in the future. I visited Richmond, VA recently and noticed that VCU has swallowed downtown Richmond the same way that NYU has swallowed Grenwich Village. It made me think that UNF could do the same thing here. They already acquired the MOCA and I've already seen UNF art students walking and biking around downtown. Can you imagine a downtown campus that reused old buildings for classes, offices, and student housing?

We are missing that university-government-industry synergy that Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Wall Street have; the kind of vortex that sucks in money and talented people.