Disney Scraps Plans for Billion-Dollar Orlando Office Complex
The battle between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ramped up this week with Disney axing plans for a billion-dollar office complex in Orlando and revealing that it will shut down a Star Wars-themed luxury hotel this fall.
In 2021, Disney said it would relocate 2,000 jobs—mostly from its Imagineering division—from Southern California to Florida, where employees would work out of an eight-building, 1.8 million-square-foot complex in Orlando, according to Spectrum News 13(Opens in a new window).
The move came with a $580 million tax break, the Los Angeles Times reported(Opens in a new window) at the time, and it got final approval(Opens in a new window) from the city's Development Review Committee in March. But that approval came amid a public battle between Disney and the governor, who went after the company for publicly criticizing(Opens in a new window) the state's "don't say gay" bill. Both sides are now suing each other.
The spat has led to the demise of the Orlando project, though as the New York Times reports(Opens in a new window), many California-based employees were not excited about having to move to Florida.
Not surprisingly, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, cheered the reversal. "Turns out, bigoted policies have consequences. That's 2,000+ jobs that will be welcomed back with open arms to the Golden State," he tweeted(Opens in a new window).
A spokesperson for DeSantis took shots at Disney in a statement to the Times: "Given the company's financial straits, falling market cap, and declining stock price, it is unsurprising that they would restructure their business operations and cancel unsuccessful ventures."
A new Sunshine State campus isn't the only thing on the chopping block: In an attempt to reduce
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