In 1994 the citizens of Miramar, Florida were preparing themselves for radical change.
With a population of nearly fifty-thousand people, they were no small village, and sitting
just about 40 minutes northwest of Miami, they were no stranger to development either.
However this was different.
A new project was coming to their region and it would be the largest entertainment undertaking
in Florida since Disney themselves first came to the state decades prior.
Featuring sports stadiums, shopping districts, offices, hotels, and even a theme park, it
would have dwarfed the likes of Universal Studios.
The company behind it all?
Blockbuster.
Yup, that Blockbuster.
This is the tale of Blockbuster Park and how the dream rose and fell in just two years.
For such a large and significant project, Blockbuster Park was born with little fanfare.
During the summer of 1993, towards the end of an earnings call and while answering questions
from investors, it was casually mentioned that Blockbuster was exploring the idea of
a sports and theme park complex in Florida.
It wouldn’t be until later that year in the fall of 1993 that the company would start
to actually reveal details for the park.
Sitting on a total of nearly 2,500 acres, Blockbuster Park would feature a 45,000 seat
baseball stadium, a 20,000 seat hockey arena, and a theme park that featured traditional
rides, virtual reality experiences, and what they called “simulation theaters”.
There would also be an area named “Blockbuster Village”, which would offer restaurants,
shops, a 24-screen movie theater, a comedy club, live music stages, a marine stadium,
a practice hockey rink, and a Discovery Zone, which was only relevant because at that point
Blockbuster owned 20% of Discovery Zone.
It would also be home to office space, multiple hotels, and just over one thousand medium
and low income homes and apartments for some of the estimated 17,000 people expected to
work at the park.
Blockbuster, who also owned controlling stake in Spelling Entertainment at the time, considered
the possibility of television and film recording studios at the park as well.
It was also never specified, but I also assume there were plans for a Blockbuster Video in there.
All in all, it was a massive complex, one that would start out with an estimated price
tag of one billion dollars before doubling by the time the idea died.
But before we get into how and why it died, there’s first the question of why it was
even an idea to begin with.
By 1993 Blockbuster was already the undisputed king of video rental in the United States,
and they had the revenue to prove it, but sports venues?
Not just one, but four?
It wasn’t really their thing.
But it makes more sense once you get to know the person who was running Blockbuster at
the time: Harry Wayne Huizenga.
In 1962, at the age of 25 and with just one truck, Wayne Huizenga started a garbage company
called the Southern Sanitation Service in the Fort Lauderdale area.
He would build up and grow the company over the following 22 years.
When he left in 1984, that company, which was by then was called Waste Management Inc,
was the largest waste management company in the country, and with it he amassed a fortune.
In 1987 Wayne would then go on to use part of that fortune to invest eighteen million
dollars into a small venture called the Blockbuster Entertainment Corp that had recently shifted
over from creating software for the oil industry to renting out home videos.
By the end of that year he, along with two others, would buy out the company and under
his control, he would apply that same drive for expansion that helped grow his garbage company.
This business prowess would earn him an estimated net worth of over one billion dollars, and
he wouldn’t wait long before putting it to use.
In 1990 he would invest thirty million dollars in return for a 15% stake in the NFL team,
the Miami Dolphins as well 50% ownership of Joe Robbie Stadium.
The very next year, for the low low price of ninety-five million dollars, the MLB would
award Huizenga one of the two new expansion baseball teams, creating the Florida Marlins.
The year after that the NHL would award him with a new expansion hockey team, the Florida Panthers.
Within three years Blockbuster’s chairman owned two major league sports teams in Florida,
and had significant ownership of a third.
Suddenly the idea of a Blockbuster sports complex didn’t seem so random.
But Blockbuster Park, or Wayne’s World as some began to fittingly call it, would face
an uphill battle.
As they spent over thirty-five million dollars on land, concerns began to spring up over
the impact the project would have on the region.
Most notably, the land for the park was just a couple of miles away from the everglades.
While Blockbuster themselves had no plans to build any closer, history showed that the
introduction of a major entertainment complex like that usually brings a bunch of additional
development after it opens.
Tons of businesses try to capitalize on the opportunity that millions of tourists a year bring with them.
This raised environmental concerns that ranged from what it would do to local wildlife to
how it would impact water treatment and availability in the area.
On top of that, trying to accomodate a park that massive would require some pretty significant
transportation expansions, including extended roads, extended railways, and additional bus
lines, all of which would fall on local taxpayers to cover.
That cost was estimated to be as high as ninety-one million dollars.
Lastly, because the land was split between Broward and Dade county, not to mention within
the city of Miramar, Blockbuster would have to seek approvals from all three to move forward,
which would significantly slow things down.
You see when Disney came to town to build Walt Disney World, they worked around this
issue by getting the state to pass legislation that would create the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
It was Disney’s own governing jurisdiction that gave them the freedom to manage their
own building codes and utilities, and to pay for it by taxing the district’s land owners…
so basically themselves.
It also gave them the power to build their own regional airport and power plants, as
well as the power to establish their own fire department and police force.
Blockbuster, facing all of the troubles that Disney managed to avoid, looked to a similar solution.
They proposed a district that would grant them similar powers and in 1994 state representative
Steven Geller would sponsor the bill to make it happen.
It took some back and forth and ultimately the district would be a watered down version
of what Disney had gotten decades earlier.
It was essentially limited to granting them the power to tax their land, control water
systems, manage mosquito control, and issue bonds in order to raise money for development.
The bill would pass in April of 1994, clearing one more hurdle on the track to build Blockbuster Park.
Blockbuster had a plan, they had the land, and they were making progress on getting permission
to build it all.
So what happened?
Viacom.
Viacom it what happened.
At the same time Blockbuster was planning this entertainment wonderland, the media conglomerate
Viacom was in the middle of a bidding war with QVC over the acquisition of Paramount
Pictures, and they were losing.
That lead to a proposition that appeared to be mutually beneficial: a Blockbuster-Viacom merger.
Under the agreement, Blockbuster would immediately invest $1.2 billion into Viacom, giving them
the funds they’d need to beat QVC and acquire Paramount.
In return, Viacom would offer stock to Blockbuster shareholders in return for Blockbuster shares,
merging the two into one.
Huizenga would stay on as vice chairman of Viacom, with some speculating that later down
the road he’d be lined up to take over the company.
Initially this merger seemed like a good thing for Blockbuster Park.
Many assumed that the combined assets of these three massive entertainment companies would
open more doors.
Getting Paramount alone resulted in people wondering if the Blockbuster theme park would
see rides based on everything from Top Gun to Star Trek.
And even though Huizenga would no longer be running the show, the progress of the planning
for the park left him confident that it would still get built.
Over the course of that year the merger and acquisition shifted between being a sure thing
to potentially being cancelled, all due to the fluctuating share prices of Viacom, Blockbuster,
and Paramount.
However in July of 1994 Viacom would acquire controlling stake in Paramount Communications
for a total cost of $9.7 billion, and just two months later, making good on the merger
plan, Viacom would acquire Blockbuster for $8.4 billion.
And just as quickly as the three companies joined together, Blockbuster Park’s future
was up in the air.
After all, Viacom had just spent over eighteen billion dollars in order to grow, so they
weren’t what you’d call enthusiastic to spend another two billion on a project that,
economically speaking, wasn’t a sure thing.
On top of that it was a project that was outside of the wheelhouse of this new entertainment Goliath.
The sports stuff might have made sense for Huizenga, but it didn’t for Viacom.
In fact, they’d go on to eventually sell off the sports and theme park assets that
Paramount owned in order to help pay off the acquisition.
They were interested in being a media company.
Officially Viacom would take some time in the fall to determine the fate of Blockbuster
Park, but in December of 1994 as they were putting together their budget for the following
year, they quietly scrapped the project.
And just as Blockbuster Park was no longer a part of Viacom’s future, neither was Huizenga.
He would announce that his time as vice chairman would be limited to under a year before moving
on to other endeavors.
Viacom would sell the land Blockbuster had already purchased and under the terms of the
taxing district, it would be dissolved after five years if the park wasn’t built, which it wasn't.
Huizenga, who once said he prefered to build up companies rather than manage them, would
ultimately go on to buy, form, and build up other companies before selling them off.
Viacom would continue to grow into an even larger conglomeration, and Blockbuster…
well, we all know how that turned out.
Blockbuster Park raises some really interesting “what ifs”.
What if it had been built?
Could it have helped keep Blockbuster afloat?
What would it have done to the development of the Miami area?
Would I have been able to use my Blockbuster card to get into the theme park?
OK probably "not" on that last one.
Blockbuster Park wasn’t a project that died because of a fatal flaw in the design, or
because of regulatory red tape, or even because Blockbuster didn’t have the money.
It was simply an idea that was formed at the wrong place and the wrong time, and now, as
with many projects over the course of history, all we can do is ask: what if?