Key Players in the Disney Expansion : Kerry Hunnewell

As project director for the Disneyland Resort project, Kerry Hunnewell has become something of a spark plug for the entire $3-billion venture. He is seemingly everywhere--meeting privately with city officials and publicly with neighborhood groups, lobbying in Sacramento and Washington.

At Disney, he engineered the Disneyland expansion’s come-from-behind victory over a competing plan to build a theme park resort around the Queen Mary in Long Beach.

Since then, he has been a key player in forwarding Chairman Michael D. Eisner’s decree that public financing should be a key component in the project.

“This is breaking new ground in public-private partnerships,” he said. “There are very few states that labor under the restrictions of Proposition 13 in terms of funding capital improvements. That’s why California ranks 49th in regional transportation infrastructure. What we’re proposing (is) that the city can invest in infrastructure without taking any risk whatsoever.”

The pace has been frenetic, he said, but it is “one of the most exciting times” in his career.

Hunnewell, 38, is a Yale-educated architect and a Harvard MBA. Before becoming vice president of the Disney Development Co. in Burbank, he managed an urban redevelopment project in New Haven, Conn.