Disney CEO Bob Iger and the Disney World Castle in Florida Neilson Barnard/Getty Images, Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images
- Disney’s decision to scrap its $1 billion campus could impact nearby projects.
- The CoStar Group told The Wall Street Journal that thousands of homes were being built after Disney announced its campus in 2021.
- However, the development group that owns the property says Disney’s decision will not affect it.
Walt Disney’s decision to scrap its $1 billion Orlando, Fla., campus this month could derail many surrounding development projects in the Lake Nona community, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Walt Disney purchased the land to build the campus in the Lake Nona community in 2021 but ultimately decided not to go ahead with it, the Journal reported May 18. Hundreds of employees who wanted to work at the new campus had already relocated to Lake Nona before Disney announced they were abandoning the plan.
Lisa McNatt, director of market research at the CoStar Group, told the Journal that Disney had built 2,100 new residential units when Disney first announced plans for construction at Lake Nona, with 1,200 units currently under construction. By comparison, McNatt told the Journal, only 750 units were built in the previous three years.
Representatives from Tavistock Development Co., the group behind Lake Nona, simply told the Journal that it was “deliberately about curating the selection of organizations, innovators, and entrepreneurs to drive our ecosystem forward.”
They also told the Journal that 95% of the apartment buildings on Lake Nona are currently occupied.
McNatt said that Disney’s presence “would have resulted in a large increase in higher-income jobs, which could have benefited the Orlando area as a whole.”
The decision to scrap the plans is part of the company’s drive to cut costs, the Journal previously reported, as well as its ongoing political feud with Gov. Ron DeSantis, which began after Disney opposed a governor-backed bill that would would limit the cost of discussions about sexual orientation and gender in public schools.
Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis previously reported that if the feud continues, the state of Florida could suffer significant financial losses if Disney, the second-largest private employer in the state, decides to pursue more projects in the state — though that hasn’t quite happened, Deadline reported .
“I think DeSantis has more to lose, as this incident made clear, depending on whether he somehow manages to put on a good face as a reasonably experienced politician,” said Richard Foglesong, a leading expert on the history and politics of Walt Disney World. insiders said.
Representatives from Disney, Tavistock Development Co. and DeSantis did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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