Press release: The path to DCA
THE NEW DISNEYLAND RESORT: A PARTNERSHIP OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONSAnaheim, California, home to Disneyland® for over 45 years, was once a place where orange groves lined the landscape. As the popularity of the park grew from the day it opened on July 17, 1955, so did the city of Anaheim. In fact, over the course of nearly five decades the city experienced explosive and uncontrolled growth that resulted in a region in serious need of refurbishment. Nearly fifty years old, Disneyland too was in need of a facelift. As Timur Galen, Walt Disney Imagineering General Manager of the new Disneyland® Resort© commented, "If Disneyland had started as the only development in a sea of green, it was now the only green in a sea of asphalt."
In 1990, the city and Disney got together to discuss their shared concerns. "Together, during the early part of the decade we worked to build a set of clearly articulated common goals and objectives around which we could construct a plan," said Galen. "That vision included a master plan for the entire area which incorporated both a Disney Resort Specific Plan and an Anaheim Resort Specific Plan. The city wanted to increase its tourism revenues, revitalize the resort area and expand the convention facility to remain competitive. Disney wanted to secure the long-term future of Disneyland through expansion, it being the jewel in the crown of Disney theme parks." In partnership, Disney and the city set out to plan both an expansion of Disneyland and the redevelopment of the balance of the resort area.
The planning challenges were immense. For Disney, the issues included upgrading of existing infrastructure and providing new infrastructure, making efficient use of limited land, balancing overall land uses, developing arrival routes and systems for complex visitation patterns and building political and community consensus. The city had these same challenges and more, such as how to finance the convention center and area-wide improvements and how to provide municipal services to the proposed new land uses. Perhaps most challenging, however, was how to solve the logistical problems of implementing a program of this magnitude in the midst of existing neighborhoods and businesses without negatively impacting thousands of people's lives.
Through this extraordinary partnership, so complex that it will have taken over ten years to achieve its goal with the opening of the new Disneyland Resort and Anaheim Resort area in 2001, each challenge was met through myriad agreements on both sides. In 1995 the actual creative concept for Disney's California Adventure Park, the sister park to Disneyland that serves as the centerpiece of the overall redevelopment plan, was given the green light. That was when everything really kicked into high gear. Actual construction commenced in 1997.
The overall process included generating physical impact studies, filing environmental and zoning documents, creating development and finance agreements, complying with municipal obligations and dealing with government at the city, state and federal level through literally thousands of details. "There are stacks and stacks of books from the planning process that totally occupied people for ten years," said Galen. The result? By early 2001, Anaheim, Orange County, the State of California, various Federal agencies and The Walt Disney Company will have invested nearly $4 billion to revitalize the Anaheim Resort area and to expand The Disneyland Resort.
And what an extraordinary new Resort it is. Included is the new theme park, Disney's California Adventure; Disney's Grand Californian Hotel, a 750-room luxury hotel; Disneyland Park; an expansion of the Anaheim Convention Center; and the Downtown Disney® area, a new retail, dining and entertainment district. Revitalization of the surrounding region has brought beauty to the city of Anaheim with its new palm tree lined streets, re-paved walkways, themed streetlights, colorful boulevard banners and lush landscaping throughout.
A parking structure, the largest in North America, now serves the new Resort. Disney theme park guests exiting the Interstate 5 freeway from the north will exit directly into the structure where speed parking for 10,250 cars will be available. After parking, a pedestrian walkway will lead them to an escalator that will take them right to the tram loading areas. Convention Center and Downtown Disney guests will travel on a separate roadway system. In addition, surface parking will be available for 16,500 more vehicles. Galen describes the plan as "the Olympics of traffic and parking."
Gateways will soon mark all the major entrances to the overall Resort, creating a unique signature for this new destination, one that could never have become a reality without the Disney/Anaheim partnership forged ten years ago. "It's a true win-win situation, both for Disney and for the city," said Galen.
But there's one more group who wins big time, and that is every guest who has the opportunity to visit and enjoy the remarkable new Disneyland Resort and the entire Anaheim Resort area.
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-- Posted October 23, 2000
Source: Company press release