^ thanks for sharing that; I had no idea the plan was to have it right by Busch Stadium and fronting Market. The rationale for the Spanish Pavilion was rather a mystery to me, but now I can see now that it most likely was pursued by Cervantes as a consolation prize of sorts after the Disney project didn't materialize.

Yeah, it's fun to think about how that would have impacted Saint Louis.... perhaps Disney didn't move forward because he thought in the end it wouldn't make business sense, but assuming it was viable financially you'd have to think it would have drawn in a lot of folks at least initially. The question I'd have though is how successfully something like that would have been able to evolve with the passing of time and in a relatively land-locked area. My assumption is they would have had to take more and more land to be able to serve up the latest and greatest to keep it competitive. So maybe you'd have a stadium and Disney south of Market and that would be pretty much it.

Obviously it would have paired well with the new Arch and hotels and restaurants would have loved it; but I do wonder what the impact would have been on corporations and downtown as a shopping destination... not sure if they would have been more inclined to stay north of Market or not. Downtown (and the whole of the city) certainly would have been different though. Fun stuff.

So I'm out of the rabbit hole after digesting this essential reading...

http://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/2 ... art-1.html

It's a ten-part series that seems to be the most authoritative look at plans for Disney's involvement at downtown's proposed Riverfront Square site. (Part 3 is where things get Saint Louis-centric.)

Where are we talking about?

The Disney site was planned for the super-block on the south side of Market from Broadway to 7th where the present-day Ballpark Hilton and Mike Shannon's are located. Of course the then new, now second Busch was half a block or so closer to the proposed site than the current facility.



What are we talking about?

Essentially a huge, 5 story + basement indoor theme park filling in the entire superblock. One half would contain Old New Orleans (1850's era) and the other Old Saint Louis (Lewis & Clark expedition to World's Fair era)



Did the plans really fall apart over beer?

No. It was an issue that Walt needed to address, but in the end Gussie got behind Walt's compromise plans to allow alcohol sales at a 5th floor observation restaurant/lounge.

So why did the plans fall apart?

Essentially money. Disney's economists (who were very, very good at their projections) projected 2-2.5M visitors a year and considered it a "yes, if" project; meaning they thought it would be successful financially but only if Saint Louis interests put in a lot of money. The basic framework for discussions were that Saint Louis interests would cover the cost of the shell building and Disney the cost of the putting in the theme park inside; however, as planning progressed Disney felt they needed all of the building construction covered by Saint Louis with Disney essentially just coming in and placing their props in, etc.... a difference of millions of dollars. At that point Saint Louis interests balked. (Also, this project was falling apart at the same time as Disney's interest in Florida was percolating; just a few months after the project was quietly buried the company purchased 27,000 acres in Orlando.)

This is pretty interesting stuff but I find the question below most fascinating.

How did Walt Disney come to have interest in a theme park in Saint Louis in the first place?

Short answer: Saint Louis's massive downtown "urban renewal" land clearance allowed for this possibilty. As part of the new redevelopment of the 1960s, the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation (CCRC) planned an outdoor mall called Riverfront Square that would be a place for visitors to the new Arch and Busch Stadium to eat, shop and be further entertained. Ironically, it was to have an Old Saint Louis theme on the very site where 19th/early 20th c. Saint Louis structures were just demolished, including an old Vaudeville theater. So Saint Louis! A theater was part of this plan, and ahead of the City's bicentennial in 1964 the CCRC thought hey, let's see if Walt Disney will produce a high quality film on our wonderful history? Talks were very successful and soon after Walt had the idea that this would be an opportunity for a much larger partnership. (Part III is a great read on the early CCRC concept.) The rest is left to the annals of the history of what if's.

I'll share some more and some personal thoughts later but I think this is a good place to stop for now.

^ It would be kind of cool if whatshisname bought them for display at his Hilton Ballpark.

I guess I will be the contrary comment here. If Disney had built this, much more of St Louis city would have been demolished for parking lots and cheap hotels to house the millions who would flock here. Not disputing the assumed benefits to the economy but I think the city would be much less historic today had this gone through.
Have been to Orlando and most of it is very sad with highways, parking lots and auto-centric development galore. There was a handful of historic buildings, enough to make one realize how much history they managed to destroy.

^ Thanks for that; interesting to contemplate for sure. While this was not intended to be a Disney World -like resort, a highly successful attraction likely would have evolved into something much bigger than the original planned superblock. So what would have been the impact on the built environment? But the interesting thing is that the CCRC clear cut so much of the southern part of downtown as part of its misguided urban renewal plans that I don't know that that much more would have been demolished had the Disney plans gone forward. I guess the sweet spot would have been for it to be successful but not too successful.

Attendance projections were for 2M - 2.5M a year, something that I think could have been absorbed relatively well without too much negative impact... perhaps what we would have seen built is hotels lining Market west of the complex instead of the new office towers, etc.. Thinking about it some more, perhaps this would have been a good thing if it kept more density in the core CBD north of Market.

Also, with your comment about hotels in mind, I think Michael Allen's piece a few years ago about MCM motels goes quite nicely with the read about the Disney plans: http://preservationresearch.com/2011/05 ... t-louis-2/