It has been well over three decades since racial discrimination was publicly outlawed in housing, education, and public transportation. While no longer chronic, the patterns of segregation by race and income persist. Residential census maps still betray the grisly story of racial isolation. Every day, in the thousands of housing developments under construction, suburban white communities inch farther out from the increasingly diverse populations of the inner suburban rings. The ending of redlining and racially restrictive covenants, it turns out, did not make a truly radical difference to demographic patterns. The free housing market has produced an outcome today that is not so terribly different from the era of high segregation. But it’s not natural to see it that way.
In late May, on a torrid Saturday afternoon, I turned out for a coed softball tournament organized as a fund-raiser for the PTSA. My own valiant home run had been disqualified because I forgot to drop the bat (why throw away a lucky bat?). Time was almost up, and my team had been hammered by the Osceola County sheriffs’ team. A male resident on the sidelines began to taunt one of the opposing team’s male players up at bat. “Quit playing like a woman,” he jeered. Larry Haber, the captain of our side, responded loudly from the other side of the field, “That’s enough of that kind of talk. Cut it out!” The remark sliced through more than the sauna heat of the day. It was a public break with the male sporty camaraderie that had settled over the games, in spite of the presence of female players. A clumsy silence followed, before the pitcher swung her arm.
Haber’s had been a mild form of gender treason, but brave enough in such a public setting. On reflection, it struck me that the sports field was a much easier place to break ranks with masculinity than with whiteness. But where could the latter occur in Celebration? As it happened, one white couple told me that the same heckler had made some apparently racist comments at a dinner party in his house. They felt uncomfortable and held their tongues rather than object to his remarks. The same scenario was probably being repeated a thousand times around the country in every setting where white folks gathered.
Celebration residents did not deserve to be singled out for these sad confirmations of white solidarity. For sure, it is a more tolerant and diverse place than many of the gated security zones that are the “natural” outcome of market behavior at the end of this century. But this town had set itself up as a model of community and housing for the future, and it was springing up in full view of a nation that had long perfected the art of segregation through its housing practices and policies. Like Levittown and Columbia, it would be very closely watched, while other communities went about their all-white business as usual. What a pity, I thought, there were not more opportunities to break bread, let alone break ranks—especially when one did not have to look far outside the White Vinyl Fence for examples of both.
In unincorporated Orange County, less than two miles from Orlando city center, I found that a different kind of experiment in restoring community and uniting races was proceeding in a forgotten 100-square-block neighborhood called Holden Heights. A formerly white middle-class area devastated by white flight after school redistricting in the early 1970s, it was now 30 percent African American, 30 percent Haitian, 30 percent Caucasian, and 10 percent Hispanic, with the highest proportion of interracial families in the city.8 Twenty percent of its housing was abandoned, and white slumlords had a tight hold over much of the rest. The city’s annexation march had swerved around Holden Heights—no tax base!—and although it was now surrounded by Orlando Metro, it had no sewage lines, too many open drainage ditches, and not a few unpaved roads. Running through its heart is the most seedy leg of South Orange Blossom Trail, ruled by liquor, guns, pornography, prostitution, and drug trafficking.
“Tourists can fly into Orlando, book into a hotel on International Drive, and within five minutes find out the name of the cross street on the South Trail where they can score drugs.” Jerry Appleby was describing his new neighborhood over lunch in the soup kitchen of Restore Orlando, a nonprofit service organization he had helped organize to give Holden Heights another chance. A pastor in the Nazarene Church, which donated a church building and other facilities, Appleby and several other, mostly white, middle-class families had moved into surrounding homes as part of a rehabilitation project directed at helping build a sense of community pride and restoring neighborhood bonds. They were following the example of other Christian community development projects, like the Summerhill project in Atlanta.
Aimed at the “reinsertion of a leadership base, rather than the teaching of middle-class standards,” Appleby spoke to me of building a “solid, stable, independent citizenry” among a population with many migrant, undocumented workers in addition to the large proportion of underemployed, down on their luck. He and his colleagues, like David and Bonnie Shaw who moved from a country club home in suburban Seminole County, or Darren and Julie Reed, who direct Restore’s youth education program and who graduated recently from a private college, now live amid the gunshots, police sirens, and overflowing septic tanks. They are more or less missionaries, affiliated with a Christian-based organization, but their “religious drive” is played down, Appleby explained, lest their evangelism be seen as a “harassment tool.”
All the same, David Shaw was quite clear about the religious nature of their mission: “We are here because we think this is what Jesus would do. This work of redeveloping is for us a way of showing the power of Christ.” The Shaws had done this by sinking a good deal of money into restoring their house (with little prospect of resale value). I asked David if he had seen any changes in the neighborhood as a result. “I believe it does have a positive impact,” he reported. “Our block used to be a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes, but when outsiders see this level of upkeep, they go elsewhere to do their deeds of darkness.” His belief that the trim appearance of the house had a direct bearing on the moral behavior of others was clearly as robust as that of any card-carrying New Urbanist.
According to Appleby, this is a community where the whites are extremely prejudiced—both the old timers who had stayed in the neighborhood and the larger, more recent influx of Appalachian working poor—and where African Americans and Haitians are often at loggerheads. Restore Orlando, which runs a range of community programs, has emerged as a mediator of racial conflict. In the absence of any neighborhood association, it has also become the functioning lobby group for the entire area, and with the volunteer help of planners and architects, has submitted a plan for urban redesign to the county. As in Celebration, the planning concept is mixed-income, where houses will cost from $30,000 to $175,000, and they will be made available as cheaply as possible through creative financing to those seeking affordable housing. Government assistance will be avoided. The poor, Appleby insists, will not be displaced by young gentrifying professionals, they will be “restored” along with the neighborhood.
As in Celebration, the improvement plan revolves around the centrality of the porch and the gridiron street life of the traditional small town. But that is where the comparison ends. Celebration’s bid to restore community life is intended to set a high-end example for the real estate industry to follow. It is a trickle-down model, and its commercial success, it is hoped, will encourage other developers to follow. The Holden Heights project starts from the opposite premise, sowing the seeds of urban rehabilitation at the lowest end. If it works, it will be an opportunity, as Appleby put it, for the “poor to teach the rich.”
12
NOT AN ISLAND
“During our last visit we explored the surrounding areas including ‘Old Town.’ We went there around eleven o’clock at night and were not very impressed of [sic] the clientele hanging out there. We witnessed a fight between several young people. Then in the parking lot a group was hanging out drinking beer and shouting profanities at passers-by. It seems to be quite a seedy amusement park area at night, not the type of high quality attraction the Orlando area is known for worldwide.”
—Cel
ebration resident’s letter to Osceola County Planning Department
In an irony of geography that no one ever mentions, Celebration’s next-door neighbor on the U.S. 192 strip is a themed attraction called Old Town. Huddled around its own picture-book Main Street, Old Town’s low-rent version of the bygone days is a mixed bag. Tattoo studios and psychic readers keep company with nostalgia emporiums and video arcades. Saturday evenings, I often joined the crowd on the sidewalk as the area’s show car owners—Edsels, Corvettes, Studebakers, Fairlanes, Impalas—line up for a stagey drive-through. Old Town also hosts the strip’s only Ferris wheel, for some years the tallest structure in Osceola County. In the summer of 1997, the Sky Coaster, a wondrous, death-defying contraption, was erected on site. The lucky customer swings in free fall from cables slung between two sets of high poles, built with an elegant space-age monumentality that seduces the curious from miles around. The Sky Coaster terrified distant onlookers and it struck fear in the heart of Celebration Realty’s sales agents. Its twenty-story poles were in full view of residents as they towered over the trees that bounded the North Village, then under construction in Phase Two of the town plan. Ever resourceful, realty agents like Greg Foxx tried to turn the Sky Coaster into a sales asset. “We tell buyers, ‘It’s the tallest swing in the world,’ ” he blithely revealed, “and we point out that it’s a good landmark by which to give visitors directions.” But it is no easy task to steer a sales pitch for luxury homes around the spectacle of inebriated tourists undergoing near-death experiences in midair. Overnight, the Sky Coaster became a shrieking sky fiend, casting a devilish spell on Celebration’s property values. As if to add insult to injury, the owner of the attraction purchased and moved into one of the most sought-after houses in town, on Celebration Avenue. He would have a tough time currying favor among his new neighbors.
Old Town, Celebration’s “bad” neighbor. (Photo: the author)
The following May, however, he had a chance to redeem himself. A rival investor in Old Town requested county approval for an even larger amusement ride—211 feet high—that would rise immediately adjacent to Celebration. Plans for the ride, called Sky Scraper, included a 116-foot tower and a 190-foot rotating arm with cars that could whirl passengers through a heady 360-degree revolution. Enough was enough. Town Hall set about mobilizing residents for collective action for the first time, roused by the latest news from Celebration Realty that estate home sales in the North Village had been on the sluggish side. Organizational meetings were announced, letters to the county’s planning department were encouraged, and a mass showing at the public hearing for the proposal was planned. Behind the scenes, attorney pressure was brought into play and area businessmen began to network. Charlie Rogers, Celebration bank manager and chair of the local Chamber of Commerce branch, worked to energize outside investors with interests on the strip against what he presented as a traffic and safety hazard—a ride rotating at 70 mph alongside the most heavily congested road in the region. The goal was to reframe the Sky Scraper as a regional issue and not as “Celebration versus Old Town.” Contrary to the tenor of the letters sent to the county by residents, which focused primarily on the personal plight of their property values, Rogers, ever politic and above-board, felt that Celebration could ill afford to go into its first local scrape from an insular position that was anti-growth, anti-entertainment, and pro–property value. “We have to pick and choose our battles carefully,” he acknowledged to me.
Celebration was readying to exercise its political muscle. Luckily no heavy lifting was required. The Sky Coaster owner turned into the town’s Good Fairy, interceding to offer the developer a share in another deal he was cutting. The rival developer withdrew his application at the last moment. Herrington’s next newsletter nevertheless recorded his “regret that our residents’ first major involvement in a public issue turned out to be our opposition to a neighboring project.”
The narrowly averted showdown raised questions about the role Celebration would play in a county with a huge backlog of suspicion about its very presence. Would the new community use its rich resources and professional talent to protect its own, or would it become a publicly minded regional player? The history of Disney’s own presence and behavior in the region had willed an awkward legacy, and the outcome of the company’s new good neighbor policy was still unclear. But there was one thing I had learned for sure. While many of its residents were fixing to cocoon in their own ZIP code, the making of Celebration had already had a major physical impact on the regional landscape well beyond its property line.
LEGALIZING IT
The strip-malled outlands of America have thrown up some bizarre juxtapositions, but you would be hard put to find a greater mismatch anywhere than in the face-off between the sequestered pocket of genteel architectural taste in Celebration and the garish free-for-all of signage, themed retail, and honky-tonk watering holes that lies outside the White Vinyl Fence. From the riotous Water Mania across the road all the way to Gatorland, Medieval Times, and beyond, route 192 plays host to every species of franchise eatery, T-shirt shack, and factory discount outlet known to the modern consumer. Robert Stern likes to refer to this strip as “the sleaze road of all times,” although, as a Disney board member, his comments in this vein often aggravate the company’s PR problems with its neighbors.1 At one point, resort and commercial property owners approached Disney for permission to name the adjacent portion of the strip as Celebration Avenue. According to Tom Lewis, vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering, the request was turned down because Celebration was supposed to set a model of good planning that would contrast with the Crazy Golf fabric of the strip. But exactly what kind of good example was Celebration to set for its county neighbors? Were they supposed to admire, copy, or simply envy it? Even if they liked what they saw, would they be able to afford it themselves? Whatever the outcome, this was the company’s first try at “going intergovernmental” by dealing directly, in the sunshine, with the county’s public agencies.
Of those who remained on the Celebration team after 1997, no one had labored longer and harder at this task than Lewis himself, recruited by Peter Rummell as director of residential development in 1986 and charged with negotiating Celebration’s land-use entitlements and special taxing district agreements at county and state levels. An architect in Orlando in the 1970s, Lewis had followed his friend, governor-elect Bob Graham, into Florida politics, where he ran the Department of Transportation and later the Department of Community Affairs. When the time came for Disney to rationalize its transportation and building needs for the planned expansion of its theme parks, no one was better connected or more up-to-date on the state’s building and zoning codes than Lewis. Cognizant of the growth management laws he had recently helped to draft and push through the state legislature, Lewis played a large role in the recommendation to develop the 11,000-acre parcel of Reedy Creek property in Osceola.
Disney had famously survived a hostile takeover bid in 1983, and a large part of its allure to corporate raiders had been the “undeveloped assets” of its film library and its unused land (at that time, only a fraction of the 28,000 acres of Florida property had been developed).2 When the New Disney, under Eisner, set about remedying this neglect—primarily through releasing its storied backlist and its new films on home video—it soon generated unprecedented profits. Their appetites whetted for more, stockholders were promised that the 1990s would be the Disney Decade, and that Celebration would be a star turn. Lewis, Rummell, and others put together a strategic plan for expanding the company’s core realty (its theme parks) and developing its other land assets. As Lewis recalls, it was evident from the outset that selling the land outright would be a bad business decision:
If you’re developing the world’s premier destination resort, and you go sell land on the perimeter, you’re going to put restrictions on it because you don’t want it to compete with what you’re doing. The more restrictions you put, the lower value the land has.… I was very f
amiliar with where controls on growth were going in Florida, and holding land in Florida is not a smart decision, because it is much more difficult to develop land tomorrow than it is today.… We wanted to do something that was compatible with and synergistic with and noncompetitive with our primary business. Community development met that bill.
After considering retiree and second-home development, the company went for the “primary market because it would produce the best value for our shareholders and it was most compatible with the corporate values that the Walt Disney Company family held—education, and the like.”
People who know real estate and who are also familiar with Disney’s financial profile expressed some skepticism about the company’s explanation for this decision. Celebration, like any large community development venture, would be a risky business prospect, not least because of the potential for bad media exposure, and it would be a long time before the infrastructure debt was paid off and any revenue could be recouped. For the project to make economic sense to Disney, and to outweigh the risks, there had to be another story. Celebration had to be worth much more to the company than the market value of its lots.
The Celebration Chronicles Page 33
