REAL ESTATE
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MAY 8, 2008

Building for tomorrow
Disney’s new home of the future debuts next month.
By Kelly St. John

For homebuilder Taylor Morrison, the unexpected phone call came like a visit from Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Disneyland wanted to build a modern-day successor to its original House of Tomorrow, built in 1957 as a vision of suburban homes 30 years in the future. It had lined up Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and software company Lifeware, but wanted a homebuilder to join the team.

Taylor Morrison, like its other corporate partners, committed to a five-year partnership on the project, which is expected to draw about 17,000 visitors a day. “I remember the day the phone call came in,” says Arianna Barrios, Taylor Morrison’s marketing director. “It’s Disney – who says no to that?”

Now, more than a year later, the team is applying the finishing touches to Disneyland’s new Innoventions Dream Home in Tomorrowland, set to officially open June 16.

The home belongs to the fictional Elias family and features a 5,000-square-foot display of a living room, dining room, kitchen, backyard patio and two children’s bedrooms.

Actors will play the family of four as it prepares to leave on an overseas trip, moving through a home so technologically smart it adjusts to individual preferences automatically, changing the art on the wall, for example. Disney’s original House of Tomorrow included many futuristic items that are ordinary today (giant-screen televisions and plastic chairs, to name a few), as well as some that aren’t (ultrasonic dishwashers and atomic-food preservation).

But the new Innoventions Dream Home won’t have the retro-futuristic feel of its predecessor – a module design with plastic walls so tough that when Disney closed it in 1967, a wrecking ball bounced off its exterior.

The home will be made with common materials like wood. “It’s ... interactive, but it will feel like a home you could walk into in any neighborhood,” says Barrios.

It’s not the first time Taylor Morrison has worked with Disney. The homebuilder constructed Main Street USA at Disneyland Paris in the 1990s and has worked on “Extreme Makeover – Home Edition,” on Disney-owned ABC.

Now, says Barrios, the company expects its work with its high-tech partners and feedback from Disney visitors will help it build better homes. “The learning that’s being done will give us a competitive edge that will last and resonate for years to come,” says Barrios. OCM

Kelly St. John is OC METRO Business Magazine’s real estate columnist.