Storyliving: Disney's Newest Venture

This week, Disney made an announcement of its newest business venture: Storyliving. In this article, we're going to summarize what we know, compare to similar ventures by Disney, and reflect on our thoughts.

What is Storyliving?

It's a great question, and right now, with many of the details undefined, we can only share Disney's vision. What we do know is that Storyliving starts with planned communities. That is, neighborhoods in which people both reside and carry out their daily acts of living including shopping, recreation, and community involvement. Disney's take seems to be that these planned communities will be organized in such a way as to bring out the best potential for people living there to live their life to the fullest.

The announcement this week included the plans for the first such neighborhood, called Cotino. Cotino will be built in Rancho Mirage, California, part of the greater Palm Springs area. This palm desert area is nestled in a valley between mountains and was an area where Walt himself owned a home and frequently vacationed.

Artist rendering of concept for the clubhouse at Cotino, on the shores of a lagoon

Other locations have not yet been named, but it is clear the company wishes for there to be other locations. Disney will likely be defining these other locations by unique settings. They are looking for stunning, inspiring areas that provide a real sense of place.

To be clear, Disney is not doing this alone. Disney Imagineers will design these communities, and it sounds like Disney Cast Members will manage the communities. But ownership, construction, and selling of the homes will be done by real estate company DMB Development.

What Will Cotino Be Like?

Our first questions upon reading this news was "when will this all happen?" and "how much is it going to cost?", and these are questions Disney has not yet addressed. We can assume, given other Disney real estate ventures, that the cost to live in these communities may be significant. And one thing that has been made clear is that there will be a voluntary club with additional fees that would provide access to some community amenities and programming. But again, we don't have details, so we'll stick with what we know.

We know there will be residential spaces. We also know that Disney is marketing some of these residential neighborhoods as specifically designed for adults 55 and older. Disney has definitively said there will be a town center, which we can assume includes a clubhouse for the voluntary amenities and community gatherings, as well as shopping and business areas.

The community will be situated around a lagoon that will use Crystal Lagoons technology (essentially this is a lake-sized swimming pool that uses water efficiently and cleanly). There will be a beach area, part of which will only be accessible by club members, and there will likely be a hotel.

For those who splurge to join the voluntary club, they will have access to a special beach area, clubhouse amenities, and special programming which could include culinary programs, travel, and more.

Artist concept of the Crystal Lagoon with Cotino nestled around it

But Why?

When one thinks of Disney, they might not immediately think of planned communities. But if one looks deeper, they might see how this has been part of the vision all along. Disney does in fact have a long history of attempting to build the perfect community. One could say EPCOT's original concept was the first such attempt, as the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. EPCOT as Walt saw it would have sought to lay out for us a way that many people could co-exist happily in a small area, with efficient transportation, residential and community spaces, and infrastructure that was both futuristic and environmentally clean.

Then there was Celebration, and more recently, Golden Oaks. Disney, one of the most well known entertainment businesses in the world, continues to dip its hand into mixing entertainment with daily living.

But it also makes some business sense. If you've been to a Disney theme park anytime in the past 10 years, you know the crowds, and you know that there is insatiable appetite for all things Disney. In this house, while we walk around singing "We don't talk about Bruno" from Disney's latest movie, we feel the months ahead of us stretch before the next big animated feature comes out. We're devouring all things Marvel, Lucasfilms, and Pixar too. We can't get enough. And where there's demand to live in a "Disney way" every single day, Disney will take advantage of that and deliver. And diversifying types of business and business assets is also important for the health of a company.

Celebration, Golden Oaks, and Cotino

Cotino is marketed as the first such Storyliving community, and some who are familiar with Disney's other real estate ventures might wonder why when there are at least two other communities we can easily point at in Florida. However, there may be some important differences.

Let's start with Celebration. Celebration is adjacent to Walt Disney World resort property on land owned by Disney. However, all of the structures in Celebration are now privately owned. Celebration was planned to be a walkable community, where all structures conformed to architectural guidelines (basically a pre-WWII modern urbanism look). Celebration's homes and condominiums are all valued at a higher than average price point for the area. There is shopping, a hotel, businesses, community parks and areas, as well as a golf course, two public K-8 schools, and a very highly regarded hospital operated by Advent Health.

At first glance, Celebration looks like it would be very similar to Cotino in that it is a place where people live, work, and play that Disney had a hand in. However, the key difference is the type of involvement and aim of the community. With Celebration, Disney wanted a certain aesthetic and lots of places to interact as a community. This will also be true with Cotino. However, with Celebration, Disney does not actually staff any of the shops, schools, hospital, etc. with Cast Members. And while there is a community center, it does not seem to have as many curated club experiences as Cotino might. Also, importantly when we look at our next community, Celebration is not gated.

There is criticism of Celebration as well. Some say the buildings, especially in the Town Center neighborhood were not constructed to withstand hurricanes well. Additionally, the regulations around pretty much every facet of home ownership in Celebration are extreme, from how high your hedges can be, to how often you have to replace your roof, which left many who moved their to leave after feeling too restricted.

Then, there is the more recent community of Golden Oaks. This seems quite different from Cotino to us, but does bear some comparison. Golden Oaks is very close to the Disney theme parks in Florida, and is a community of very large and quite expensive homes. While there is a clubhouse, there are not shops, hotels, or other businesses. The concept of Golden Oaks seems less like a place where you have your primary home, and more like a place where the very wealthy would invest in a secondary vacation home. Golden Oaks is also gated.

The main criticism of Golden Oaks is that the homes are out of reach of the average American earner. This is a community for the very wealthy, make no mistake about it.

It has yet to be seen whether Cotino and other Storyliving communities would be gated, or would have some residential properties within reach of the average buyer in the area. We do know that there will be some theming to the houses and buildings. From the concept art, it looks like a futuristic modern look is planned. We also hope that with a solid partnership with a real estate company, the buildings will be more practical to withstand whatever the environment throws at them. It seems to us the key difference with Storyliving will be that these communities are less about how they look and more about what happens within them. At least, we hope this to be true.

Artist concept of beach at Cotino Town Center

Final Thoughts

It seems a little alarming when a large media and entertainment conglomerate plans a community, though, as we explored, it's not like Disney hasn't gone there before. We worry about restrictions, and Stepford-Wives-looking neighborhoods and part of us thinks "Get out of our business, mega-corporation".

BUT, and we can't help but frame this in terms of the collective trauma of the pandemic we've all been going through, there is something here, some promise of living life fully, some promise of recharging both as an individual and within a community, that feels necessary. The pandemic has not only exhausted us, but, if the everyday violence occurring in the world right now is any indication, alienated us from one another. We learned to fear each other at a basic level of fearing each other's air, lest we get some horrible invisible illness. We learned to isolate. Somebody, something, needs to bring us back together and remind us that communities are healthy and good for us.

Is Disney the right entity for this? I don't know, but when I search for things that have moved me most in the past couple years, I think of a night on Main Street in Disneyland Park, lights dimmed, a sweet holiday song playing, and fake snow blowing from the rooftops and how everyone as far as my eye could see was together in that moment. Strangers smiled at each other - hundreds of us, happy to be there, happy to be together, happy for each other, all because of this little experience Disney crafted. Would I want that feeling of togetherness in my daily life? Heck, yeah.

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