Disney In D.C. Redux

I read with equal measures of interest, nostalgia and amusement this morning that the Walt Disney Company has purchased 15 acres of land at National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland, to be built as a hotel resort at the burgeoning convention facility.


A few years ago, that would have set my heart a-reeling with excitement. I've been a Disney geek for most of my adult life, and I've spent a fair amount of that time aspiring to work directly for the company. I was fortunate enough to be an ABC employee for 11 years under Disney's ownership, and it is truly a great company to be a part of.


Once upon a time, I came **this** close to working for Disney directly. Back in 1994, when the company was planning its "Disney's America" park in Haymarket, Virginia, I essentially turned coverage of the story into a full-time beat. I covered Disney like a blanket, and even managed to travel to Orlando to interview several company executives about the project. Aside from airing stories almost daily, I also prepared a 5-part news series called "American History: The Disney Version", which offered an in-depth look at both Disney and its opponents. The series went on to win broadcasting's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, the Alfred duPont Silver Baton.


I was living in fat city. Although I was doing my best to stay neutral on the air, I was truly conspiring to latch on with Disney behind the scenes. I had a great relationship with the Disney P.R. folks, and I truly believe they would have hired me once construction got underway. My wife and I had even driven out to look at the park site and discussed where we might live. But it turns out my dreams were swept away like so much pixie dust. The week after my series ran on the air, Disney pulled the plug on Disney's America. Appropriately enough, I was vacationing in Disney World when the news was released.


Disney chairman Michael Eisner told me later that the company was simply not willing to engage in a pissing match with the well-funded historians and environmental groups that were promising to spend the next decade suing to stop the project. I won't waste space here crying "sour grapes" over what happened. I've blogged about this before, so you can read about those thoughts here.

Flash forward to Disney's latest plans for DC. It's no secret the company has long coveted the tourist market here. Visitors to Washington tend to be better educated with higher incomes and more discretionary income than average. It's one of the main reasons Disney was attracted here in the 90's. However, I'd caution anyone about getting too excited about this latest news.


First off - Disney is not offering any timetable for when it might build a hotel at National Harbor. In fact, it seems like the company is cautioning it might be several years, and it certainly won't happen without a solid period of economic recovery. National Harbor isn't filling up it's existing capacity, so I'm sure Disney is in no hurry, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's never built at all.


Disney has already said it has no plans for anything beyond a hotel at National Harbor, and at 15 acres, there's no way the National Harbor will be anything BUT a hotel. If you're having visions of new theme parks, you can forget about it. Disney's world view is now global. It will continue to open new attractions and to renovate its existing US resorts, but in terms of new parks, Disney is thinking Shanghai, not Suitland.


If Disney does build in P.G. County, it will really amount to a new form of business for the company - making Disney a corporate travel name in direct competition for the Hyatt and Hilton customers of the world. I do not believe Disney's primary focus would be tourists in this case, because the main tourist attraction - the Mall - is a good half-hour drive away. Disney would certainly offer group tours of DC, and charge a pretty penny for them, too. But I believe this is more of a play for convention business.


Disney is also in the timeshare business, but I doubt it is looking to open a Vacation Club resort at National Harbor - at least, not at first - because the nearest current tourist attraction is a good half hour drive away. The developers of National Harbor envision it someday becoming a stand-alone destination resort - some place you'd take your family to for a week, like Ocean City or Hilton Head. National Harbor is certainly not that kind of a place right now, and my guess is the owners hope Disney will help to bring that kind of flavor to the area. But I think that growth will have to measured in decades, not years.


In any case - if and when Disney does come to DC, I'm quite sure I'll be lined up to see what they have to offer... and depending on what it is, I might even bring my resume with me!

Pave It Over!

Watch out, folks... I feel a "soapbox" rant coming on!

A battle is brewing in Orange County, Virginia, where Wal-Mart is proposing to build a 135,000 square-foot store near the so-called "Wilderness battlefield", part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

The Battle of the Wilderness involved more than 100,000 Union troops and 61,000 Confederates, when it was fought on May 4, 1864. The fighting, according to National Park Service estimates, left more than 4,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.

The parcel of land that Walmart proposes to build on was not part of the actual battlefield, but it is believed to have been a staging area, where Union troops waited around to go into battle, and civil war preservationists say it's an important piece of history.

The land has been zoned for commercial retail use for decades, but lawmakers are split over whether to give Walmart the permit it needs. Some say they'd welcome the business Walmart would bring to Orange County, not to mention the $500,000 annual tax revenue that would flow into the local coffers. Other lawmakers say Walmart would detract from the historic nature of the area and damage tourism.

This is a very familiar argument to me. Back in 1994, I was front and center in covering the controversy when Disney wanted to build a theme park five miles west of the Manassas battlefield. Opponents (who were well-funded by the wealthy residents of Middleburg, Virginia) were able to win the P.R. battle and eventually get Disney to throw up the white flag, even though Disney had won all of the political battles up to that point, including support in the state leguslature.


Disney CEO Michael Eisner told me in a 1996 interview that Disney had pulled out of Virginia because it did not want to continue to fight its battles on the front page of the Washington Post, nor in the courtroom, where opponents were promising to throw legal challenges which would have delayed construction for several years.

Now here's where the soapbox comes in.

Wars happen. We're lucky they haven't happened in the United States in a long time, but they DO happen around the world, and you don't see other countries preserving their battlefields the way we try to preserve them in the U.S.! What parts of Europe are NOT built on top of battlefields? How much more land do preservationists want to preserve? And why should this land, which was nothing more than a waiting room, be preserved?

I get steamed about this because the whole Disney saga was an exercise in hypocrisy. The land opponents were fighting over was not a battlefield - it was farmland located five miles away from Manassas. Opponents complained that Disney would bring strip malls and tacky t-shirt shops to the region, even though the very road that runs adjacent to the Manassas battlefield already had strip malls, convenience stores, and ironically, a huge Walmart less than a mile away.


"Disney's America" would have provided Prince William County with an industry and a tax base. Instead, Prince William largely continues its role as a bedroom community - a place where people go to sleep, but go to work some place else. As a result, with little industry to support the local economy, homeowners largely carry the tax burden there alone. In the current economy, this leaves the local government broke and has created a housing glut as prices have plummeted.

We have thousands of acres of land from Georgia to Pennsylvania preserved to teach our children about the Civil War, as well we should. There are many lessons to be learned from these important properties. But why is every square foot of land ever trod upon by a U.S. soldier worthy of being saved? One lesson that must also be taught is that after the war is over, life goes on. The airport on Long Island that Charles Lindbergh took off from on his flight across the Atlantic is now a shopping mall. At least they named the mall - Roosevelt Field - after the airstrip! Yankee Stadium is about to become a parking lot. Even Ground Zero in New York is being redeveloped into skyscrapers.

Is it really worth denying taxpayers a revenue source to protect a piece of land that is merely near a battlefield? I think my friend, John Butler, has the right idea about preserving land. He suggests, (in jest, I think) that environmentally sensitive land be paved over, in order to preserve it.

Sounds like a plan to me!