Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

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earthling
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by earthling »

KCMax wrote:Disney's former studios on Troost will be revived as museum
A Kansas City non-profit group, Thank You Walt Disney Inc., is looking to convert the historic building at 1127 E. 31st St. into an interactive museum and digital production studio. Butch Rigby, the chairman of Thank You Walt Disney, said the project has been a long time coming...

Rigby said the plan calls for converting the first floor of the building into a theater where historic cartoons produced by the Laugh-O-Gram team will be screened. One section of the building's second floor — where Disney and his fellow animators worked — will be restored as much as possible to original conditions. The other half of the second floor will be converted into a digital drafting studio. Knoll said the group is also looking at establishing a new center nearby that would serve as a classroom space for aspiring digital animators.
=D>
Well that only took about a half century after some half-hearted attempts.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by Demosthenes »

earthling wrote:
KCMax wrote:Disney's former studios on Troost will be revived as museum
A Kansas City non-profit group, Thank You Walt Disney Inc., is looking to convert the historic building at 1127 E. 31st St. into an interactive museum and digital production studio. Butch Rigby, the chairman of Thank You Walt Disney, said the project has been a long time coming...

Rigby said the plan calls for converting the first floor of the building into a theater where historic cartoons produced by the Laugh-O-Gram team will be screened. One section of the building's second floor — where Disney and his fellow animators worked — will be restored as much as possible to original conditions. The other half of the second floor will be converted into a digital drafting studio. Knoll said the group is also looking at establishing a new center nearby that would serve as a classroom space for aspiring digital animators.
=D>
Well that only took about a half century after some half-hearted attempts.
Hey we're not there yet. Says they still need funding, and hope to get this going within 2 years... I bet this takes awhile.

What can you say though? A couple million dollars isn't easy to fund purely by donation.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by KCMax »

You'd think the Disney Corporation might be interested in throwing a few Disney bucks at the project.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by Midtownkid »

These are right around the corner from Laugh-O-Gram...I really really wish they could be renovated along with it.

Image

Undoubtedly a Nelle E. Peters design. They match the twin buildings that used to be behind the Ambassador.

Save them!!
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by KCMax »

Disney magic: Laugh-O-Gram repurposing moves ahead
The restoration and repurposing of the Laugh-O-Gram Studio building is rolling along, and construction of a new, dual-purpose facility could be underway by the end of 2015.

The building, just off Troost Avenue at 1127 E. 31st St., was home to Walt Disney from 1921 to 1923 and is widely considered to be the birthplace of Mickey Mouse. A Kansas City nonprofit, Thank You Walt Disney Inc., stabilized the building in 2001 and 2002 and put plans in motion to revitalize it as a digital production studio and museum. Now, with a feasibility study underway, the dream is moving a bit closer to reality.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by WinchesterMysteryHouse »

$51K just to fund a study whether or not this is a viable idea? The true arts community in the city did alot more in the new city with $0K.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by flyingember »

WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:$51K just to fund a study whether or not this is a viable idea? The true arts
community in the city did alot more in the new city with $0K.
you're funding people's time to figure out if there's business interest, if entities will provide money for the renovation, if there's people that will be interested in working there and such. so that before they start looking for funding they have a solid plan to go to banks with

$51k isn't that much either when you move beyond someone's gross pay. that's maybe 150-200 hours of actual work

the true arts community in the city has individual paintings sold at $5000 each.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by loftguy »

flyingember wrote:
WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:$51K just to fund a study whether or not this is a viable idea? The true arts
community in the city did alot more in the new city with $0K.
the true arts community in the city has individual paintings sold at $5000 each.

I knew I should have been an artist.....
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by flyingember »

loftguy wrote:
flyingember wrote:
WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:$51K just to fund a study whether or not this is a viable idea? The true arts
community in the city did alot more in the new city with $0K.
the true arts community in the city has individual paintings sold at $5000 each.

I knew I should have been an artist.....
I sell at art shows sometimes (at way lower price points). It's really hard to get material worth that price and really hard to sell them.

There's some artists that carry the same paintings around for years. I've been to the same shows for enough years I begin to recognize work.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by mgh7676 »

Redevelopment of Laugh-O-Gram could honor Disney, revitalize neighborhoods
A feasibility study on redevelopment of the historic Walt Disney Studio at 31st and Forest finds significant potential for creating a joint use museum, office space and digital storytelling center at the site. In addition, the study suggests the redevelopment could spur new growth and innovation in the area, which is the crossroads of four Midtown neighborhoods: Center City, North Hyde Park, Union Hill and Mt. Hope.
http://midtownkcpost.com/redevelopment- ... hborhoods/
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by TheBigChuckbowski »

Why does everyone think Longfellow doesn't exist? Union Hill stops at Gillham, not Troost.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by rxlexi »

Why does everyone think Longfellow doesn't exist? Union Hill stops at Gillham, not Troost.
Maybe because there is so little neighborhood "branding" in KC?

Union Hill does a reasonable job of making itself known as a unique entity with decorative gates, signs, a garden tour, etc.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by flyingember »

rxlexi wrote:
Why does everyone think Longfellow doesn't exist? Union Hill stops at Gillham, not Troost.
Maybe because there is so little neighborhood "branding" in KC?

Union Hill does a reasonable job of making itself known as a unique entity with decorative gates, signs, a garden tour, etc.
my neighborhood is made up of like 15 neighborhoods and I know the name of maybe two of them and have no idea where the actual boundaries of my own sub-neighborhood is. now arbitrarily assign borders on a grid and see how many people care to keep track of the boundaries

larger blanket names are far easier to keep track of.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by chaglang »

The city doesn't even seem to have a good handle on neighborhood boundaries. I discovered today that something called the Paseo Heights Neighborhood Association was recognized by the city as having 31-39/Troost-Armour as its boundaries. Problem is, that's Squier Park, Center City, and a large portion of Ivanhoe.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by rxlexi »

The neighborhood naming issue, to me, is another symptom of KC forgetting how to be "a city" over the past few decades, including the lack of neighborhood commercial spaces to form a center or identity for many hoods.

Until very recently, there has been little push to brand or even "name" neighborhoods in the public consciousness, very few neighborhood-level businesses with a broader draw, like say Westside Local (very little neighborhood commercial, period), and therefore relatively few people that have had a reason to know or describe specific 'hoods or share them with others. Think of how few people even know that a South Hyde Park or Pendleton Heights even exists, for example, though they may know and enjoy the Westside from a prior trip to the Local or Blue Bird.

RE: Laugh-O-Gram, I think in theory this is an awesome project and am thankful the building has hung on this long, likely thanks to stewards like Rigby that understand its history. A completed animation/studio museum here would be a nice start to the revitalization of 31s/Troost, but I'm not holding my breath with any development along or east of Troost in this city.

And man, those nearby apartments are stately; I would love to have seen midtown around 31st/Linwood/Troost in its prime.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by chaglang »

As an aside, Laugh O Gram studios aren't in a neighborhood at all. The 3100 block of Troost/Forest - and possibly as far as Paseo, I can't remember - have held themselves apart in the hope of starting their own neighborhood.

Re: neighborhood identity, there is a pretty tight link between the amenities and/or affluence in a neighborhood and the wider awareness of its existence, obvs. One of the ways neighborhoods have overcome that is through events sponsored by the city's NTDF fund, but apparently that is being curtailed/discontinued.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by chingon »

I'll go on record again as saying I loathe really formally defined neighborhood boundaries. To me a neighborhood is an organic thing that should have nebulous fringes and overlaps that are loosely determined by the mood of the time, by broad public discourse, not the kind of rigid and basically phony "marketting" attempts of a city. The cities I know of that claim to have "x numer of distinct neighborhoods" provoke a pretty viscerally negative reaction in me. Smacks of "branding", and upon investigation one usually finds that such claims are total horseshit, most of the "official" neighborhoods listed do not in fact exist, or not a distinct entities from their neigboring neighborhoods.

Not that I don't agree that KC, especially east KC and the part of the Northland where there actually are neighborhoods, is particularly bad about not conceptualizing them, but I'd take it over the alternative...
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by pash »

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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by chaglang »

That pretty extreme, to say that neighborhoods exist despite their neighborhood associations. The NAs are usually exactly as good as their neighborhoods: if there are a bunch of NIMBYs running it, it's usually because the neighborhood is full of NIMBYs. It's kind of irrelevant how the city chooses to define neighborhoods vs their popular perception, because the city is using them as a way of distributing services at a micro level, not for marketing. They are just trying to make sure all the acreage is covered. Whether the city should be relying on dozens of all volunteer organizations to do that is another question.
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Re: Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios

Post by flyingember »

chaglang wrote:As an aside, Laugh O Gram studios aren't in a neighborhood at all. The 3100 block of Troost/Forest - and possibly as far as Paseo, I can't remember - have held themselves apart in the hope of starting their own neighborhood.
The city has a label for them even if they don't.

Between Troost and Paseo
north of 31st to 19th is Beacon Hills
South to Armour is Center City

I have a pdf from planning that's ~10 years old and that's the name they give for that area. It has 240 neighborhoods labeled.
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