Disney Picks Chief to Build Theme Park

Walt Disney Co. said Monday that it has picked an East Coast executive with a strong urban planning background to head its effort to build a second theme park in Southern California, either in Anaheim or Long Beach.

Kenneth P. Wong, 35, has been working as a senior vice president for Disney Development Co. in Burbank for about a month. A company spokesman said Disney had not gotten around to announcing the position until Monday.

Wong is in charge of all of Disney’s West Coast real estate ventures, including the $600-million expansion of its Burbank studio and the creation of a second amusement park and hotel resort to complement Disneyland.

Though the site for the latter is yet to be officially selected, Anaheim is believed to be the leading choice for a world’s fair-style park and three new hotels because of extensive environmental and public cost concerns in Long Beach. Either project is expected to cost about $3 billion.

Wong has a wide-ranging development background. He developed commercial office buildings, hotel and retail projects in Boston and Virginia before coming to Disney Development, Disney’s real estate arm.

“He was chosen because he has pretty strong credentials all around,” Disney spokesman Tom Deegan said.

Before Disney, Wong worked for Himmel & Co. of Reston, Va., where he was senior project director for the Reston Town Center. The combined office and retail project was designed as a downtown for the suburb near Washington. The planned community had such a residential orientation that it lacked a meaningful downtown for a quarter century, not unlike the planned city of Irvine.

“The idea of a downtown in the suburbs was something that no one really had a grip on,” Wong told the Washington Post last year.

Wong will report to Peter Rummel, president of Disney Development.