One of the Projects I've been working on-Golden Oak Ranch

[Hugh R]

For about the last year or so, I've been involved in is building Los Angeles' newest movie studio at the Disney Golden Oak Ranch. We're putting in a dozen or so residential facades, and several blocks of business street facades, as well as a dozen soundstages, a Mill, Commissary and Production support offices. Disney will be spending about $750 Million over the next few years on this project. One of the challenges was the Universal Studios backlot fire a few years ago. LA County Fire wanted us to sprinkler and have fire hydrants that could deliver 5,000 GPM for 6 hours. The Golden Oak Ranch is on wells and we already have a one million gallon water tank, and that wouldn't meet the GPM requirements and be available for re-filling water dropping helicopters for brush fires. So we worked out a compromise where by the buildings are made with steel studs, concrete board and virtually no flammable or combustible materials.

In Los Angeles, it's pretty unheard of to be doing this kind of development in this economy. The Golden Oak Ranch is located a few miles from my house, and I have similar terrain and oak trees, but I only have 18 acres and the Ranch is over 800 acres.

Click on the links below to see the development. On the first link, click on the "residential street" to see the houses and how they're constructed. The second link shows the planned development of the entire project.

Golden Oak Ranch

http//www.studiosattheranch.com

[kaisen]

Pretty cool Hugh. How did they procure 800 contiguous acres? Was it a ranch/farm before acquisition?

[Hugh R]

Walt Disney bought it in the 1950's and the company has acquired adjacent parcels ever since. In the 50's there was truly nothing out here. Yeah it was all ranch land. The last acquisition they got from Exxon/Mobil (80 acres, IIRC) they got a few years ago for virtually nothing.

[Joeaksa]

Interesting!