Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer I know several people in Arvida.... ...We live very close to it. And yes, it's a beautiful area.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Well, building codes have improved tremendously since Hurricane Andrew. I live in an Arvida built home and had Hurricane Shutters up during Wilma (a Cat 3). I wouldn't have known there was a hurricane outside if not for looking out the peephole and watching the news.
Originally Posted By leemac <<In 1984 the Walt Disney Company purchased a land development company called "Arvida".>> Not many folks know much about Arvida or its current owners St. Joe Company. I recommend someone google "former ceo st. joe company" and take a look at the results. There is a familiar name who retired recently. )
Originally Posted By leobloom >> The land was useless as it is south of US192 and east of I-5 - it was never going to be part of Walt Disney World Resort. << That makes sense, but hasn't Disney also started selling land like Flamingo Crossings that isn't separated from the resort by 192 or I-4? I'm not really clear about the location of Flamingo Crossings, so maybe it's also undesirable land?
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Celebration was a huge success. We sold about $600m worth of residential property during TWDC's ownership period. The town's population was about 8,000 when the final parcel of land downtown was sold off in '04.>> Yet, some Spirits would suggest it never should have been built to begin with. Disney didn't come to Florida to be a real estate company interested in build-out, which is what Michael Eisner started and Bob Iger keeps pushing the pedal to the floor. They barely have any REAL (substantial) land available for growth now. And green belts are now little retention ponds with scrub and shrubs. Not like during the 70s-90s. I honestly feel TDO and Burbank think the parks are ancillary businesses to timeshares/real estate/food/retail. And why someone would pay the prices Disney wants when they live in places like Windermere is crazy to me. If I had that kind of money, I wouldn't want to live trapped between theme parks and resort hotels with smog-belching busses clogging my roads etc. I really HATE this idea. <<The fact is that the company didn't want to run the town after the first phase target was reached. Control of the town's board passed to the residents and TWDC began to sell of the remaining assets. A venture capital firm bought the last 18 acres or so that included the retail/dining downtown.>> Disney didn't want to run the town because bad things happen in REAL towns and its name would be attacted every time a child was sodomized, a husband beat up his wife, a fight turned deadly etc ... The whole point of Celebration was a quick profit at a time when Orlando's market could support it. <<The town continues to attract a substantial premium over the rest of Orlando and although house prices are down like all of central Florida the decline has not been as severe as elsewhere in the city.>> Naturally. The same could be said for my town in SoFla (which was started by TWDC when it owned Arvida in the 1980s). But values have still gone down. People have been foreclosed on. Celebration hasn't been immune.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<So...Disney essentially milked the concept for what it's worth and got rid of it?>> and this surprises you?
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 >> No - the build-out is contingent on sales so you won't see Golden Oak building all of those properties unless there are committed buyers. << <<Have you put your deposit down yet Lee Mac?>> Don't you know he's the ONLY UKer on Earth who doesn't want to live in O-Town? If he didn't buy in Celebration and dumped his DVC ownership (think it was BW), I doubt very much he'd put any $$$ into Central FLA real estate. I do think he could afford one of the eight million dollar jobs though! ;-)
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<LeeMac explains it so much clearer. It must be that British accent.>> I never got why Americans always equate a British accent with intelligence ... or the Queen.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Have you put your deposit down yet Lee Mac?>> <<I avoid central Florida projects like the plague so no chance of me buying a property - even if there was cast member discount. >> Damn ... this is what happens when I don't post for a while and there's a bit of action. << Imagine if there was CM discount - a $8m house would be $5.2m - the biggest discount imaginable!>> And a good thing Disney isn't building on spec because they might very well be offering those ... although I don't know one WDW exec that could afford an $8 million home. Many would struggle with $1.5 million.
Originally Posted By HokieSkipper Okay...so I've thought about this a little, and I must say I hate this idea. It just has Donald Trump-like sleaze all over it.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<I am not allowed crayons, unless they are the non-toxic soy bean variety.>> I've heard those taste great in chili and soup.
Originally Posted By Ursula <Imagine if there was CM discount - a $8m house would be $5.2m - the biggest discount imaginable!> Did they not put a cap on total discounts per year? That would be a great price, but it wouldn't fly. I think the cap is $45K? Or am I remembering wrong. Again.
Originally Posted By HokieSkipper << I think the cap is $45K? >> That's more than 99.999999% of CMs make in a year. Combined.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<I still don't really see what Disney's motivation was for developing Celebration. I get they wanted profit and sell some land, but I dunno. That doesn't seem to be what Walt meant by 'the blessing of size.' Seems that Disney felt like it owned too much land. Odd concept, that.>> <<^^ The land was useless as it is south of US192 and east of I-5 - it was never going to be part of Walt Disney World Resort.>> I've heard that many times, Lee, and frankly I believe it's a cop-out used to justify the real estate business. The land could have been used for many different things ... and, yes, even a park or two. Disney dropped Disney-MGM right down in an awful location ... so building thru World Drive up the 'new' end and placing something else there could have been done. The Mouse wanted to make a quick buck in the real estate market and play on all the 'losers' (yes, my word for them and maybe harsh but I'll stick with it) who felt they would be superior life forms for living 'in Disney World'. They almost got me in 1995, so clearly they had great marketing and a decent (but not nearly as special as some believe) product. But I am so glad I didn't wind up there for so many reasons ...
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<In 1984 the Walt Disney Company purchased a land development company called "Arvida". Most of Celebration was developed under that name.>> Are you sure? I can't recall my history well, but I am pretty certain Disney had long since dumped Arvida before Celebration was developed. Disney bought Arvida and a greetings card company to avoid the greenmail/takeover in 1984 and I thought within five years they were gone. <<Arvida was a prominent Florida land developer (the company was created by ARthur VIning DAvis) responsible for homes all over the state including most of the City of Weston (outside Ft Lauderdale). If you drove through Weston it would be easy to believe you were driving right across Disney property...without all the Mickey roadsigns.>> Sounds like a lovely, if thoroughly boring place. Lots of folks with 'tudes, I'm sure! <<In 1992 Hurriance Andrew devastated areas south of Miami. The City of Weston was just being built so many displaced folks from down there moved to Weston...a boon for Arvida. But, wouldn't you know it...many of the destroyed homes in the South Miami area were built by Arvida and it wasn't long before the company (still owned by Disney) was facing a class action lawsuit with plantiff's claiming they were not built according to Florida building codes. Disney sold Arvida...and I would suspect that lawsuit was one of the reasons why.>> Disney had definitely sold before Andrew. Folks sued Disney (the Country Walk/Kendall people) because Disney had owned the company when they built the homes. Arvida is just like every other developer in the state as it cuts corners wherever it can and once it is gone, just try to get them to pay for anything. When they move into a new development, the first few subdivisions are always the best. High quality in everything. But by the time they start mass construction, it's anything goes.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Well, building codes have improved tremendously since Hurricane Andrew. I live in an Arvida built home and had Hurricane Shutters up during Wilma (a Cat 3). I wouldn't have known there was a hurricane outside if not for looking out the peephole and watching the news.>> I can't say the exact same as you, wahoo ... and my home suffered severe loss of roofing tiles, as did everyone in my subdivision because -- in many cases -- they didn't even bother to properly fasten them down. There should have been little to no damage considering when the homes were built (years post-Andrew), but it looked like WW3. Oh, and I was stuck at Port Orleans during the storm. Disney had the parks closed and I was scheduled to check out, but since there was a tropical storm warning (and 65mph gusts) in O-Town, I requested a late check out. They wouldn't give me one, so I stayed five hours late anyway ... no one came to the door ... maybe because no one was out in the storm, but to this day it is one of the things that makes me angriest about Disney. You hear about how they react during emergencies. Well, telling guests they need to leave a room during a major weather event is NOT magical, not guest friendly, not smart ... and, in my case at least, not followed!
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 Oh and according to some spirit with more real estate knowledge then myself, Disney dumped Arvida around 1987-88.
Originally Posted By magnet This Arvida thing is actually interesting to me.... Arvida eventually became the homebuilding arm of St. Joe Company, as leemac said, but as the housing bubble burst, St. Joe got out of building homes. St. Joe still develops master-planned communities, but it has relationships with other builders, like Beazer for example, to build the homes in them. That leaves Arvida's fate a bit uncertain to me. It seems that St. Joe just closed them down - but I don't know for sure. I've seen some of the Arvida stuff that was built towards the end of the bubble. I have mixed feelings about it. Some of the designs were nice, it felt like an architect designed the homes with some interesting features in them. The homes weren't just boxes partitioned into smaller box-like rooms. However, in some cases, just good common sense was violated, and I think actual build quality at times may have been lower. For example, one of their "ideas", in some cases, was to put the hot water heater on the 2nd floor so that you would get hot water in the shower really quickly. Nice idea, in theory. However, it's not necessarily the smartest thing. Water heaters break and can leak, and if you've got one in your house - it could flood you on a bad day. No, there was no catch pan! It also took up some desperately needed closet space on the second floor, so you catch my drift. The quality of the construction materials in some cases seemed a little cheap too, but the homes still had a certain elegance. Anyway, it was always said that the roofs of Frank LLoyd Wright designed buildings usually always leaked (see the SC Johnson Wax building). So, I guess you either get elegance or functionality from a builder.
Originally Posted By CaptainMichael The more and more I think about this, the worse I feel about it. So glad Universal got the rights to Harry Potter. It's what they needed and at exactly the right time.
