The Big Flop - Celebration, Florida: The Unhappiest Place on Earth with Stuff You Should Know | 52

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Celebration, Florida was conceived by the Disney Corporation as a magical utopian community, something straight out of a fairy tale—meticulously planned, picturesque neighborhoods replete with ice cream parlors, bike paths, and state-of-the-art facilities. But the promise of living in a theme park soon became nauseating thanks to a greedy real estate developer, crumbling houses, rampant divorces and allegedly… swingers? In the end, a confusing combo of micromanagement and neglect left residents feeling disappointed and certainly disenchanted.Josh Clark and Chuck Byrant from Stuff You Should Know join Misha to put a damper on Celebration, Florida.Follow The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Big Flop early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Laurel Rousseau is an odd duck in the town of Celebration, Florida. Sure, she moved there because of its promise of small town splendor with local charm. But unlike all her Disney loving neighbors, she wasn't expecting any singing forest animals to help clean her house. Nevertheless, Laurel was charmed by the town built by the mouse. The architecture was unique. The town was as walkable as a theme park, and its downtown broke from the rest

of the central Florida sprawl. If she had moved in when the town was brand new more than a decade ago, life may have been perfect. But Laurel never got the memo. Disney's cashed out and an evil witch in the form of a real estate developer purchased the downtown. Since then, she says things have fallen into disrepair, and to her it feels downright depressing. The General Store has closed. There's no bakery. And even the movie theater sits empty. One less place to hide from the ever-present swarms of mosquitoes.

Even worse, Laurel's condo's roof has been leaking since she's moved in, and she claims she can't get the property manager to do anything about it. Laurel writes all her complaints down and sends a direction to the condo's association's lawyer. She wants to sue the owner of Downtown Celebration. A question crosses her mind. Do you think the Imagineers designed a Disney-themed courthouse? named Cork House? A brand new town with old-fashioned values. Welcome to Celebration USA. This is where people will be able to enjoy an ice cream cone as they sit on a rocking

chair. It's just overwhelming to think, can we live in a place this great? The construction of the homes was not as good as it should have been. The trim on the houses and things that were on it away. There is an element, like any city or town, of things that are not happy. We are on a sinking ship.

From Wondery and Atwill Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time. I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar and whatever the opposite of a Disney adult is at Don't Cross a Gay Man. And today, we're talking about Celebration Florida, the saddest place on Earth. -♪ Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I'm Ennis James. And I'm Colin Murray. And we are the hosts of Everything to Play For. And our next two-parter is all about the mighty Leicester City and their rise to become Premier League Champions in 2016. They defied the odds, well, 5,000 to one to be precise. We're talking Mourinho versus Ranieri, we're talking Thai monks in the dressing room, we're talking dilly-dings and dilly-dongs.

And let's not forget Andrea Bocelli singing Nessun Dorma at the King Power Stadium. No word of a lie, my favourite part of the whole story. Better than anything a Leicester City player managed to do, and they managed to do a lot. None more so than Jamie Vardy and his infamous party, The Crisps and Dips were on him. Follow everything to play for in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can binge seasons early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. On our show today we have the co-hosts of the incredibly informative podcast, Stuff

You Should Know. It's Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. Welcome to the show. Hello. Hello. The crowd goes wild. Thank you for having us. I'm so excited.

So I guess before we jump into the story, I have a really pressing question. Are you a Disney adult? I don't even know if semi captures it. You know, I've gone to Disney as an adult without a kid present. So if that qualifies as it sure, I didn't buy any merchandise and I certainly didn't wear it around the park.

You know what I mean? Yeah, that's in the ish category. Right, yes, well put. I have a daughter. So I took her to Disney World for her first trip a couple of years ago. And we had a great time because we went with another family with a couple of kids.

But I think that was key was for me, having other kids for her to do stuff with and enjoy things with and having other adults to drink with. To be fair, in my defense, my wife and I have a kid, she just happens to be a dog and we can't bring her to Disney World or else we totally would. Same. Well, Celebration Florida is a community originally designed by the Disney Corporation. Now, just to be extremely clear for all of you celebratonians out there. We're not calling the town of celebration

as it currently stands a flop, but wait until you hear this story. We begin in 1966 when Walt Disney, the person, not the company, reveals his grand plan for a futuristic town, a perfect place for perfect little families. Let's hear about it from the Mouse Man himself. We call it Epcot. Experimental, prototype, community of tomorrow.

We must start with the public need. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community. Everything in Epcot will be dedicated to the happiness of the people who live, work, and play here and those who come here from all around the world to visit our living showcase. Are you breaking open that piggy bank and buying in? That's right. It was a slight cult leader quality to that clip. Right.

I'm such a non-Disney adult. I had no idea that Epcot was experimental prototype community of tomorrow. Not a lot of people are walking around with that knowledge in their head, to be fair. To be fair. Well, Mr. Disney never sees his community of tomorrow. He dies later that year and the ambitious scheme is shelved. Now fast forward to 1994 and Disney CEO Michael Eisner is overseeing a full blown renaissance of the brand. So he decides to revive the big man's grand plan and Walt Disney's

utopia will soon become a reality. With its plethora of neat-looking structures and around-the-clock cleaning crew, celebration will be the pinnacle of New Urbanism, a compact, beautiful, walkable city that transports its residents to an era of small-town living, a correction to endless suburban sprawl. Eisner gives this project the most Disney name ever, Celebration! Because everything at Disney's a party, right? Well, you know, we actually know some of the original working names.

I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't read a couple of these, right, Josh? Please. They started out with kind of long names like Golden Oberon Jubilee. And Josh, what was your favorite with the four words? Odyssey Ventura Horizons Landmark. Rolls right off the tongue. Exactly.

It doesn't even spell anything as an acronym. The kind of place where you wake up at three in the morning and see somebody just quietly sweeping up the street. That's haunting. Just that thought is haunting, you know? It's strange. There was another one that came really close, AmeriTown,

which is like, I don't know. Yeah, I think Celebration, given the working titles, is not so bad in retrospect. Well, the Walt Disney Corp annexes almost 5,000 acres of land and considers building a new park. But thanks to a study of flood elevation levels and some inconveniently placed conservation areas, these 5,000 acres are deemed unsuitable for a theme park expansion.

So obviously the perfect place to build a town from scratch. But Celebration is divided into seven residential areas called Villages, a central lake, and a downtown called Town Center. Famous architects are enlisted to design it. So let's take a look at some of the buildings in the Town Center. This googie-styled movie theater was designed by Cesar Pelli, whose work spans dozens and dozens of buildings around the world, including the World Financial Center in New York, New York. Could you describe what the Celebration Theater looks like? It looks like the 1950s threw up on the 1940s. Right.

It's cool looking. I mean, I would love to go to a movie there. We both are admirers of that style in general. Yeah, there's another name for it, Doo-Wop Architecture, which I think captures it pretty well. Yeah, they would have loved that. This next one is the very modern looking City Hall, which was designed by Philip Johnson,

who designed the Paley Center for Media in New York, and also the largest glass building in the world, AKA the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. Dude loves angles. Well, I see it's right next to the cooler looking post office. I don't see where the building is. It looks like a bunch of matchsticks just holding up a roof and ceiling. I don't see where the building starts.

It's all columns. It's like some column fan just went completely buck wild on the place. I don't see where the building starts. It's all columns. It's like some column fan just went completely buck wild on the place. You can't even see the building. The facade is literally just columns. Yeah, everywhere you look, columns. I'm using the word literally in a literal sense. Right.

Well, speaking of that post office, this barrel-shaped post office is by Michael Graves, known for his playful and colorful facades. It's fun. It's got like a silo entrance. It looks kind of like something you might see in Disney World, like Pluto's Playhouse or something. It's got like a minimalist Donald Duck look to it.

Ooh. Yeah. Now for our listeners, you might recognize the name Michael Graves. It's from our JCPenney episode because he designed the infamous teapot that accidentally, we presume, looked like Hitler. I haven't heard about that one.

You didn't? Do you want to see a photo? Yes, please. Oh my God. Wow. That looks more like Hitler than the Paris Olympic logo looks like Mary J. Blige. Wow. That looks more like Hitler than the Paris Olympic logo looks like Mary J. Blige. Wow. Well, back to celebration. Aside from the town square, the dwellings are meticulously coded.

All housing structures within city limits must meet strict style guidelines. Houses must conform to styles such as classical, Victorian, colonial revival, coastal, Mediterranean, and French, whatever any of that means. And there are four sizes of lots available for development. Estate, village, cottage, and townhouse. I mean, types of plants allowed and in what sizes are also in the book. And only four types of windows are permitted. Two principal types and two special types. Special windows. Yeah, I wonder what those are.

They're nothing but columns. Yeah, exactly. And for the town's palette, the preferred colors are yellow, white, cream, beige, terracotta, and if you're a complete maniac, maybe pink, peach, or saffron. Ooze and Oz. So are you sold or does it sound like a huge snooze town?

If I could like shave off 10% of myself to go live there, I probably would. There are some appealing parts to it. Like, I like pastel colors for sure. Cottage sounds pretty awesome. Like just going full cottage core, totally. But in reality, no, I absolutely wouldn't. Yeah.

The more and more we delved into it, the more it seemed like a little, don't worry baby, Stepford wives kind of situation. Anytime you're handed, I think we saw that there was 160 page rule book aside the style book, on just where to park your car. And we also saw that you need to hide a mouse in your house, a Mickey Mouse somewhere in your house. That's weird.

Well, Michael Eisner pours another two and a half billion dollars into celebration and the town doubles in size to 10,000 acres, making even more room for those eager residents. And finally, in November of 1995, the town is ready for some down payments on these still-to-be-built homes. But demand for these nerdy dwellings far exceeds what's available. So 5,000 die-hard Disney fans show up and put $1,000 down each to enter a lottery for the opportunity to buy the first 350 houses and 123 apartments. So on June 18, 1996, the first family moves into celebration. And on November 12th of 1996, the downtown is completed and the day is proclaimed Founders

Day. Now initially, the new residents are thrilled to be living in celebration. Actually, let's listen to a clip from a BBC piece on the project. People talk about trying to recreate the sort of town that they were brought up in. I mean, what was lost from those towns? When you grow up now and you're living in a town and you have to leave to go to the library, you have to leave to go to the grocery store, you have to leave to go to the doctor, right here at Celebration you have everything at your fingertips.

Right. Everything at your fingertips. Right. Everything at your fingertips. What else could you possibly need in a silo-shaped bank? Exactly. What really struck me was that Walt Disney was selling the idea of the future originally, but Eisner is selling the opposite. He's trying to sell nostalgia.

Yeah. Right. When you think of the 1950s, what do you imagine? I mean, I imagine picket fences and kids on their bicycle with their dog running behind them, which was their official government seal. Again, literally. It's hard these days to not sort of be spooked out a little bit about this, you know, hey, let's take us back to the past when, oh, let's take us back to the past when, oh, America was great or something like that.

Yeah, I think one of the big criticisms people have about celebration trying to do that is that there actually wasn't any period that was perfect like that. To try to pretend that there was, I think leaves out a lot of stuff that people are like, no, no, you need to add like virulent racism and gender inequality and all that

if you're gonna make celebration really like the 50s. Yeah, I don't think these 90s people really wanted the actual 50s. They wanted that postcard version. You know, the Norman Rockwell painting, sort of mommy's state with 180 page rule book or whatever that was. I mean, even the town slogan is just a little bit ominous.

Yeah. Something's going on here. Oh, wow. And one of the features of celebration will be no visible poverty. Visible poverty, very key word. Question, how do you hide the poor? Yeah, you just park them out back in the rear with the cars that you're not allowed to see in your own driveway. Yeah, you just park them out back in the rear with the cars that you're not allowed to see in your own driveway.

Yeah, exactly. Well, they're hiding the poor in two ways. First, they're selling homes for a third above market value. So we can call that unaffordable housing, I guess. And second, no public transportation goes into celebration. All right. That's sort of anti-forward thinking. There's actual blockades. There's barricades and people armed with long guns for any bus that tries to get through. They're turned away at the celebration border.

Very Mad Max. Yeah. So the residents, they're ready to move in, but is celebration ready for residents? Now to find out what these celebration suckers, I mean residents, were sold, let's go there through the magic of television. Here's an ad campaign the town did early in its existence. There is a town in Florida where the sun shines warm. A place to truly live it up just by sitting down. A quaint lakeside promenade.

Renowned for its world-class restaurants and all nestled in the harmony of nature. Celebration Florida, you've got to see this place. I feel like you have to say the slogan, you've got to see this place, like Bill Clinton. Right. That was like the most 90s ad I've seen in a while. Yeah, totally. I mean, did you notice anything weird about the town that they were presenting?

Just about everything. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, what I noticed is that they kept showing empty restaurants. Oh, yeah, I didn't pick up on that. Yeah. Everything was empty. In fact, every shot, there was no more than just a couple people in it and the cuts are

so fast, I couldn't really get a feel for how anything actually looked. Right. Probably by design. There was no overall look. It was just like a little snippet here and a little snippet there of something that seems to be appealing on some level for sure. Despite the Imagineers' best intentions and the festivities and marketing, living in Celebration isn't the non-stop party it's cracked up to be.

For starters, the many tourists who swing by treat celebration like just another theme park and they're not totally wrong. The downtown shops and businesses actually need outsiders to come and spend their money, so Disney plays up the Truman Show aspect of the place. Fixtures and logos look similar to the ones at Disney. Think hidden Mickey emblems, not just in people's homes, but all around the town. Let's look at one of the most famous examples from Celebration.

This is the Mickey pylon. It's 32 meters tall and lights up at night for fun. I thought it might be doing the job of a street light, but it's surrounded by street lights as well. Those are high voltage wires. Oh, okay, yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's just knowing that there's tens of thousands

or hundreds of thousands of volts just flowing through Mickey Mouse's head. Right. It's a little weird for sure, it's creepy. The Mickey pylon isn't the only unsettling thing about celebration. We've got to talk about some of those rules we've been hinting at.

Garbage bins must be kept behind houses. Next to the poor people. Yeah. Next to the poor people. In downtown, workers make the litter disappear almost immediately. Speakers are planted in the landscaping, like at a shopping center,

although that was quickly deemed too creepy, even for Eisner. One of the things that stuck out to me that I don't like about Celebration, I don't like anywhere, is fake snow that's actually shaving cream or soap suds. Yes, and they did a lot of that fake stuff. Fake leaves are blown all over downtown sidewalks in the fall. In the winter, there is a giant Christmas tree, but it's plastic.

And those soapy flecks are sprayed on the downtown to simulate snow. Josh is like, boo! Yeah, right. Even the ice rink is a sheet of plastic. Yes. Have you ever seen, like, apartments above shopping malls? Have you ever considered what it would be like to live in one of those?

Well, yeah, that'd be amazing. But there's never a good store beneath it, you know? It'd be great if it was a really great bar, a really great restaurant, but it's always a fabric store or something like that. Yeah, Ross Dress for Less. Yeah. I've always thought it must be really strange to have like a constant stream of people in

your backyard. You couldn't be a paranoid type. Yeah, that's for sure. I think the celebration nights, they felt special and kind of cool. Almost like when you're on like a Hollywood star tour, like people would go through their town and be like, do you think they live here? I think they're actual residents. And so I bet that was part of the appeal for some of them.

Well, also I think there were a certain amount of like bragging rights, which I think also accounts for why they paid 30% more for their houses than people in the surrounding area because they were the hardest core of Disney fanatics, right? Yeah. So I'm sure they had friends that were also Disney fanatics that were just dying of jealousy because they moved into Celebration.

So the town is pretty corny and creepy in the Stepford Wives sort of way, like you were saying. But it's also deadly in a Stepford Wives sort of way. Alligators just sort of hang out by the lake. So swimming is out. There are buzzards, so not ominous at all. At one point, Nala, a 400-pound lion, escapes a nearby theme park called Jungle Land and terrifies the community.

Wow. Oh, man. But it turns out there's an even scarier natural menace in town. Mosquitoes. Now these skeets are a huge buzzkill. Literally. They carry a deadly virus that causes a very serious disease called Eastern Equine Ecephalitis. Most residents stay inside rather than risk severe illness. Some residents of a nearby town start to whisper that Disney pays people to walk their dogs and sit on their porches for a certain number

of hours each week for the vibes. The celebrators say the rumor is ridiculous. First of all, that sounds, I don't know if you've seen the movie Jaws, but that's exactly what happened when no one is swimming on the beach and the mayor's like, get in there, you know? It's fine, just go out in the water.

So that is pretty creepy. I would think Disney could have done some weird, probably dangerous in a public health sense thing about those skeets. That was another thing about growing up in the 80s. They used to drive down the street with trucks that fumigated your entire neighborhood and they would send out letters beforehand and be like,

do not come out of your house after 6 p.m. this evening because the mosquito trucks are going through. And I'm with Chuck, I'm kind of surprised Celebration didn't do that, but they pretended it was fake snow or something like that. Right. Exactly, that's what I was thinking, something along those lines.

Well, while the Celebrationists, or should we call them celebrators? I don't know. While celebrators hide from killer bugs, there are some perks to living in the town. Residents are offered free computer and cell phone service. Now, this is 1996, so that's amazing. But there's a catch. They have to opt into having something called a Zeus box installed into their home, which monitors every call they make or website they click on. Wow. That is officially crossing the line. Because I was going to make a joke earlier about the speakers in the trees that played Birdsong and stuff. And I was like, and where

were the microphones? And here you go. Yeah, they're in the people's homes. Little known fact, a lot of the houses came with paintings, but you had to opt in for the eyes to follow you around the room. That was part of the Zeus box pack, yeah. Oh boy. Well, if you don't like being spied on, that's fine,

but you still need to conform if you're going to live here. Only two people are allowed to sleep in a bedroom, according to that famous rule book. Oh, wow. No violent films are allowed in the Celebration Movie Theater. So how do you think people have fun around here? Nervously walking their dog, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, they were probably seeking that kind of homogenous, cleanly G rated thing, like you were saying earlier. So I imagine the residents were down with 100% of this, and maybe that's the most terrifying thing. Well, one thing that we ran across though, is that there was a documentary done in 2012 called The Bubble, which is what a lot of people who live in Celebration Call, where they live, The Bubble. It intimated that there was a pretty healthy swinger scene in Celebration, so that could be what they do for fun.

Orchies. Essentially. Well, no more than two people sleeping in a room. Sleeping. They didn't specify what other activities were or were not allowed. Sleeping. They didn't specify what other activities were or were not allowed. Right. So, yes, the rumor from the documentary is that the neighbors start wife swapping to relieve boredom. Yeah. And we say rumor because some locals confirm and some deny that this was going on.

But supposedly there's something called the 605 Club for people who like to really celebrate. Oh, wow. Now the name might come from members of the golf club who'd meet at 6 o' 5 p.m. And eventually they figured, we're already swinging, we might as well swing. So with all these celebrators screwing around, sometimes things get serious.

And there's a phenomenon nicknamed the celebration separation, because a high percentage of people who move happily married end up divorced. I can't imagine the tension of a couple where one is full on celebration and the other one has like reservations about it. That could very easily account

for splitting a marriage up, you know? Yeah. I'm also thinking like these speakers that were in the bushes, if they're playing it's a small world after all over and over and over again, I would also go on a murderous rampage and divorce my husband immediately. In 2004, Michael Eisner decides to pull the plug on all the magic.

The plan was always to build the town and then start selling it off, and Eisner thinks it's time. So Disney sells the town center, you know, where the businesses are, to a private real estate company called Lexin Capital run by a guy named Metin Negrin. Negrin doesn't exactly follow the Disney ethos for sunny perfectionism. Following his deal with Disney, Negron sets up a web of companies and splits ownership of the downtown among them. Lexan Capital, Lexan Celebration LLC,

Lexan Celebration Commercial LLC, Lexan Capital and Lexan Realty LLC. Wow. He also establishes the Town Center Foundation to oversee maintenance and make sure the foundation is labeled a corporate nonprofit, potentially qualifying for federal tax exemptions. All those LLCs, he sounds like the kind of guy that's like, limited liability sounds okay. Do you have anything? Do you have a zero liability? Is that a thing? Can we get rid of the limited part?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Negrin converts all of the 105 downtown apartments into condos and sells them for $20 million. He spruces up the downtown and then uses one of his various LLCs, Lexan Celebration Commercial, to refinance the town for $23 million in equity. So that's $21 million in profit in just a few short months.

Good for him. Good for him. But here's the problem. Disney didn't build the town to last, but what they did do right was maintain the properties well, fixing anything that broke. Do we think that Negrin's going to do the same? BOTH LAUGH

Well, we know the ending, so we don't want to spoil anything. Also, the name of the show is The Big Flops. Yeah, exactly. Well, once Disney pulls out, almost on cue, everything, and I mean everything, pipes, roofs, balconies, staircases start breaking down. And the residents claim they aren't allowed to get them fixed. That's because Negrin's foundation calls all the shots

and the residential group, the Town Center Condominium Association, has no power. Despite charging the downtown residents a collective Downtown Center Condominium Association has no power. Despite charging the downtown residents a collective $26,000 a month in assessments, which are fees earmarked for repairs, residents allege the foundation doesn't fix anything and the homes just keep rotting. So, it's 2007-ish. What happens to homeowners now?

Yeah. Well, there's sunny skies on the horizon, I'm sure. Right. Actually, no. Big Flop superstar The Great Recession claims many victims. Yeah. Homeowners see the value of their homes evaporate, and about 500 celebration residents experience foreclosure and local businesses shutter.

There's less and less to celebrate in the next couple of years. In 2010, around Thanksgiving, AMC closes the beautiful Celebration movie theater. Turns out only showing clean films doesn't make you any money. That same year, Celebration experiences its first murder and its first suicide, sparking national headlines and marring Disney's squeaky clean reputation since they still own parts of town outside of that city center. I think the rest of the world, by the way, was so waiting for this that in newsrooms around the world, all the editors had to say was, it happened, it finally happened. Yeah.

They knew exactly what they were talking about. They started writing about it. Meanwhile, Negrin starts charging residents a special assessment fee to fund building repairs because the normal assessment fee has apparently been spent, though the residents claim it wasn't on repairs. Man. In 2015, he makes some quick fixes to a couple of buildings and refinances the town again, pulling out $13 million more. Now the fixes are technically paid for by a loan from Lexan to the foundation,

which consists exclusively of Lexan employees. But the residents, they're not informed. Wow. He then has the gall to announce another special assessment, around $100,000 per household to pay for those small fixes to just a few houses. We did learn that the, and this is also a little depressing to hear these days,

but the median home price there was $124,000. So if he's asking for that kind of money for assessments, it's unconscionable. And I mean, like we're still bouncing back from that recession. My mind won't let me project myself into that situation because like I won't have any teeth left from grinding them down. But you're stuck, you know, that's your home at this point. By 2016, the residents, they can't take it anymore. The condo association sues Negrin for more than $15 million, citing chronic negligence

and leaving the buildings to rot and collapse. Condo owners allege that balconies are peeling away from structures and that the roofs leak from torrential Florida rains, creating a mold problem in the condos, one neighbor claims her house sways beneath her feet because of the water damage. Negrin says, yeah, there's wear and tear, but it's not because of anything I did. It's all because the condo association

mishandled the money in repairs back in 2005. Oh man. It's incredible. Yeah. I wonder if that lawsuit said, you know, we're suing Lexan for negligence and this, that, and at the end it just said, and frankly for being a real Scrooge McDuck. A real Scrooge McDuck.

Just like give them language they'll understand. Can you see a resident just going like, I love celebration. Yeah, once the microchip kicks in. Once the Zeus box is activated. The residents are being forced to pay fees, but have no say on how that money is spent. So they accused Negrin of taxation without representation. You know, the reason for America's Revolutionary War. If you were Negrin, how do you gain back the

residence trust? I don't know. Maybe a resolution on, uh, on throupling and orgies to kind of get that spirit back. Doubling your fake leaf imports, maybe? Yeah, that'd be good. Well, in 2017, Lexan pulls the huge loan to the foundation scheme again, only this time it's an insane $2 million,

which the residents will have to pay back with interest. That's not pocket change. It's about $20,000 per household. So how would you handle Negrin now and does it involve pitchforks? Pretty much. Pretty much. You said it, but I really wanna make sure

everybody realizes this. The homeowners like association made up of the actual homeowners have zero say in whether they accept a loan from Lex and Capital or Negron himself, he started making personal loans that he was gonna be paid back with interest by the HOA. So the company was voting on their behalf and forcing these loans on them.

Yeah. Do you have a picture of this guy? I'm like, my mind is swirling with mental images of every villain I've ever seen. Yeah, Mr. Burns. Yeah, it's a lot of combinations of bad guys in my head. I'm just thinking Jafar. Exactly.

So after three years of litigation, finally in 2019, a judge agrees that the foundation should operate as an HOA, which means residents should be able to weigh in on how their homes and public spaces are run. This years-long battle wasn't to fix up their homes or make the town safer. It was just to have the ability to decide for themselves how to spend their own money.

America, am I right? Yeah. So let's do a little Where Are They Now? While things got floppy for a bit in Celebration, the town still exists today and has grown to 16,000 residents. The website features photos of some pretty idyllic looking scenes of suburban bliss. Celebration was also thrust into the spotlight when Florida's governor Ron DeSantis started picking fights with Disney over their opposition to his Don't Say Gay bill.

As retaliation, DeSantis had Florida take over Disney's special taxing district created decades ago in 1967 to allow Disney to make municipal decisions without asking the government's permission. And for a while, Celebration was caught between Lexan, Disney, and a board appointed by DeSantis. But DeSantis and Disney have since settled their dispute. Now, Lexan Realty still owns the downtown and Negrin continues to feud with residents without anyone taking the blame. Cue that meme of all the Spider-Man pointing at each other. By the

way, the Celebration Theater is still closed. Against the desires of the residents, Lex and Realty has not leased it to anyone. What? We were wondering that actually. I was pretty sure that somebody had probably taken that great theater over, but that pretty sure that somebody had probably taken that great theater over, but that's sad. Yeah, that's another thing that's worth mentioning too. In addition to creating a terrible quality of life for the homeowners downtown, these are architecturally important buildings that they're letting just crumble and fall to ruin.

Every single building, like you said earlier, was designed by a very famous, respected architect. And the fact that they're all put together in one area is very rare. So, architecturally speaking alone, it's criminal to just let those buildings go to rot. Well, here on The Big Flop, we try to be positive people and kind of end on an upswing. So, are there any silver linings that you can think of

when you think of Celebration Florida? I mean, you know, I think now it seems like they're trying to just lean into the, not like, hey, this is Disneyville, USA, but hey, it's just 25% of the national average in violent crime and the streets are pretty clean. We tried to get rid of the creepier elements and now it's just a nice Tony suburb. I'm going to go with what Chuck said.

That's not me talking by the way. Even though it was always for profit, Disney intentionally building a joyful town doesn't seem like a totally evil idea. I mean, and maybe well-meaning developers can learn from Disney's mistakes. Although finding well-meaning developers is its own thing. I don't know. That's a good point. Well, now that you both know about Celebration Florida, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop?

I mean, there's so many different facets to it that are floppy. And then if you just kind of zoom over a little bit, it's so many different facets to it that are floppy and then if you just kind of zoom over a little bit, it's not quite as floppy. I guess if I had to put it all together, I would have to vote a medium flop. Yes. I mean, clearly Disney's vision for their perfect little town didn't go quite as planned, but there's 16,000 people living there today, so clearly some people are loving it. Yeah, I'd say a big flop as well.

Not quite a disaster, of course, because there's still people that are enjoying their lives there. But it's more than a baby flop. I said medium flop. I'm the guy who goes into Starbucks and is like, I'll have a small, please. Well thanks to our idyllic guests, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant for joining us here on The Big Flop. Make sure to go check out their episode of Stuff You Should Know on Celebration Florida,

coming soon to a podcast app near you. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review. We'll be back next week to talk about a big swing and a floppy miss. It's the Tiger Woods cheating scandal. Bye! Bye! Bye!

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