Welcome to Lake Nona, Florida, a new master-planned community located
inside the city limits of Orlando, a few miles south of the Orlando International Airport. Here
you’ll find medical campuses, lots of expensive real estate, and cattle ranches. A mix of the old
Orlando and new, right now you are looking at the future site of Disney’s massive regional
campus that could, in the future, be capable of supporting tens of thousands of employees.
Currently 60 acres of unassuming Florida land, with a pond, some barbed wire fencing,
and livestock nearby. Already you can see the signs of bigger things to come for this community,
as it goes from primarily medical campuses, to the home of aviation companies, autonomous vehicles,
and the largest entertainment company in the world. This is a look at Disney’s
mission to establish a tax friendly base of operations, as they begin their move to Florida.
As far back as 2019, Disney was already exploring moving employees from California to Florida.
In December of 2019, Disney applied for a tax credit from the Florida Department of Economic
Opportunity. In the application, Disney detailed a plan to build a massive new campus somewhere in
the state, which in total they estimated to cost 864 million dollars. In early 2020, this Florida
tax credit was approved, meaning if Disney does choose to relocate employees to Florida,
building that campus in the process, in exchange, they are eligible for over a half a billion dollars
of tax credits from the state over the next 20 years. As the events of 2020 unfolded,
many companies joined Disney in a search towards more business and tax friendly pastures.
Many large institutions including banks and other large corporations began announcing moves to the
southeastern United States. For Disney, 2020 further catalyzed their need for someplace new,
as public clashes with the State of California, particularly in their failed attempts to reopen
Disneyland, showed how little of a grapple the company had on the governing bodies
that affected their operations. Meanwhile, back on the east coast, despite the myriad of
companies announcing job relocations to the southeast, Orlando, Florida, in particular,
was not blessed with any of these massive employee relocations. That was the case at least until this
July, when Disney officially announced the first relocation of employees from their headquarters in
California to Orlando, Florida. To start, roughly 2,000 employees will be heading to Florida.
Most of these 2,000 consist of Imagineers as well as other Parks-related employees.
This means, a large portion of Parks Creative, who currently work nearest to Disneyland,
are soon going to be working 30 minutes from Walt Disney World, which many Parks fans hope
could mean some increased creative focus on parks that previously have been created by some
Imagineers some two thousand miles away. Already a historic change in Disney’s operation on its own,
based on the scope of Disney’s just-purchased land for a 60 acre regional campus,
moving Imagineers is likely just the beginning. Here we are walking along one of Lake Nona’s
main thoroughfares arriving at the start of the future Helios Boulevard, currently only
open to construction traffic. West of Helios is a rather unassuming grassy field. From above,
we discover in the middle this field is a large pond. What could one do with this space? Well,
Dynamic Campus, LLC which is a known front for the Disney Parks and Resorts, just spent
46 million dollars acquiring this 60 acre lot, for what is slated to be a new regional campus, as
Disney calls it. A regional campus might not sound like anything too earth-shattering, but looking at
the preliminary site data, we discover this plot of land is capable of holding 1.8 million square
feet of office space, which is enough space for 20,000 employees. The specific area Disney
chose is next door to a rapidly developing Town Center home to fitness venues, dozens of corporate
offices, hotels, upscale dining, and is a short walk away from massive residential developments,
inside and bordering Lake Nona itself, not to mention being minutes away from the Orlando
International Airport, with planes flying over Disney’s land on a consistent basis.
It’s important to establish the massive scope of the area Disney is choosing to place their
new so-called regional campus. Because in Disney’s public statements so far, they’ve been insistent
on downplaying the extent of their business here, highlighting that the 2,000 employees set to move
only account for 5% of the California workforce. In truth, 2,000 employees is much more than 5%
of Disney’s corporate workforce in the state, and 2,000 employees is likely the most Disney
can move at once, if they were looking to set up a new base of operations outside of California. And
that’s because corporate relocations take serious time and effort, with the process of relocating
employees being largely an infrastructure problem. Looking at the 60 acre patch of grass and water
Disney’s just purchased in Florida, it’ll take significant manpower to turn this into something
on par with the infrastructure Disney currently enjoys in Burbank and Glendale. Not only is there
the matter of employees having a place to work, a process that’ll be completed one building,
and one batch of employees relocated at a time. Just as important, as demonstrated this past year,
is a place for employees to live. And here too, Disney’s actions are pointing towards a
much larger project than what they’re saying to the media. Tavistock Development Company
is the real estate firm that is building out the already successful community of Lake Nona,
where Disney’s regional campus is to be housed. Now, the same company is in the early stages of
developing a neighboring, age-restricted community called Sunbridge. The Villages, which you may have
heard of, is a huge age restricted community well north of Orlando, along the Florida
Turnpike. Here, southeast of Orlando, Sunbridge is shaping up to become something very similar,
except this community will be located minutes from the Orlando International Airport, the
neighboring community of Lake Nona, and is only a half hour from the Walt Disney World Resort.
A month after Disney announced the first move of employees, the Orlando Business Journal reported
Disney was in talks with Tavistock to build an age-restricted community inside of Sunbridge.
This could provide Disney with a place to house some of their relocated employees, alleviating stress
on the existing real estate market in Orlando, as well as potentially offer Disney additional sources of revenue
in the area, with demand for age-restricted communities in Florida projected to skyrocket
over the next 10 years. Sunbridge has the capacity for almost 23,000 single family homes, 14,000
apartment units, and 6,000 hotel rooms. Sounds like a good source of housing infrastructure
just minutes away from Lake Nona, where Disney is beginning to develop their billion dollar regional
complex physically capable of housing the bulk of Disney’s current corporate staff in California.
As you can see from our newly obtained drone footage of the Sunbridge area, this place
is going to be huge, and is being built out at a rapid pace every single day. The future of Orlando
is looking quite exciting from what is already being built in this future hub of enterprise,
Lake Nona, and looking at Disney’s land here, it is my belief what today might be referred to as a
regional facility, could, in the future, not just be home to Imagineers and various Parks employees,
but also other divisions like Consumer Products for example, and then the question becomes,
what other segments in Burbank may come to reside in this tax friendly, lower traffic, lower cost
of living, billion dollar campus? Surely Disney will always have studio employees in California,
that’s where the sound stages are, that’s where Hollywood is, but beyond studios and Disneyland
employees, this massive new campus could enable virtually any segment of Disney to relocate,
and begin to call Florida home. Let me know your thoughts on Disney’s land acquisition here, and
what it could mean, especially for us Walt Disney World fans. It could be a game changer. Thank you
so much for watching, from the Mickey Views Magic Studio, this is Brayden, Have a Magical Day!