Disney cancels plans for $1bn campus in Florida amid battle with DeSantis
The Walt Disney Company is scrapping plans to build a nearly $1bn corporate campus in Florida that would have housed 2,000 employees amid its ongoing legal battle with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
Josh D’Amaro, the Disney parks chief, said in an email to employees on Thursday that “changing business conditions” prompted Disney to reconsider its 2021 plan to relocate employees, including its imagineers who design theme park rides, to a new campus in Lake Nona.
The company was expected to spend as much as $864m on the project, according to the Orlando Sentinel, for a campus that would have served as a base for Walt Disney Imagineering and the Disney Parks, Experiences and Products division.
Disney’s decision to move the California-based Imagineering staffers across the country drew complaints from employees, many of whom said they did not want to move to Florida.
“Given the considerable changes that have occurred since the announcement of this project, including new leadership and changing business conditions, we have decided not to move forward with construction of the campus,” D’Amaro wrote. “This was not an easy decision to make, but I believe it is the right one.“
A week ago, the Disney CEO, Bob Iger, publicly questioned Florida’s interest in the company’s continued investment in the state. In a call with investors to discuss quarterly results, he noted that Disney employed more than 75,000 people in Florida, attracts millions of visitors each year to Walt Disney World and had plans to invest $17bn to expand the resort over the next decade.
“Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people and pay more taxes, or not?” Iger asked.
DeSantis’s press secretary, Jeremy T Redfern, wrote that while Disney announced the
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