Disney’s Renowned Attractions Chief Quits

Judson C. Green, a 19-year veteran of Walt Disney Co. and chairman of its thriving theme parks and resorts, became the latest executive in a long string of top managers in recent years to quit the Burbank company.

Both Disney and Green’s new company, Navigation Technologies Corp., said Monday that Green will become president and chief executive of the Chicago maker of digital maps for auto navigation systems, effective May 8.

Green, 47, a former chief financial officer of Disney, once was regarded as a potential successor to Michael D. Eisner, the company’s chairman.

Taking the helm of Walt Disney Attractions in 1991, Green led the push to add new parks, hotels and retail and entertainment zones. Second theme parks, hotels and retail-entertainment zones are now being built at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland to create “destination resorts” like Florida’s Disney World.

The attractions division has become the most consistently profitable unit during Disney’s troubled recent years.

But in late 1998, Green was supplanted as the division’s president by Paul Pressler, the former president of Disneyland. Green became chairman of the unit and focused on overseas expansion, including negotiating the recent agreement to build a Disneyland in Hong Kong.

Sources said Green’s departure reflects not only the chance for ownership in a promising concern expected to go public soon, but also frustration with a boss whom he, like many others, considers manipulative and impulsive.

The executives avoided the appearance of discord Monday, with Green looking to the future and Eisner expressing thanks for Green’s work and wishing him success.

“Judson is an outstanding executive and his creative skills and business acumen are evident in our many successful theme park initiatives,” Eisner said in a memo to employees. He noted Green’s “critical role” in reaching agreement with Hong Kong’s government on the new theme park.

Green is the latest executive who, chafing under Eisner’s demanding style, has decided to quit and move on. About 75 high-level Disney managers have left the company over the past six years, including studio chief Joe Roth, who departed in January to become an independent producer, and Patricia Fili-Krushel, who quit last month as president of Disney-owned ABC Television Network.

Sources said Green was frustrated by what he considered Eisner’s overemphasis on extracting profits from the parks and loss of interest in further expansions. Green, who had reported to Eisner for 11 years, also was said to be tired of Eisner’s tendency to play executives against one another--in the words of one insider, “a Darwinian game of survival of the fittest.”

Eisner Downplays List of Departures

Eisner has said in previous interviews that the media make too much of Disney departures, arguing that “there’s less to this than meets the eye.” He said the company does not have unusually large turnover for its size and that those who left did so for the chance to run or buy into major companies.

In an interview, Green said he was proud to have revitalized Disney’s parks, nearly tripling their annual profit to $1.45 billion over eight years. He said he had accomplished his goal of expanding operations in Anaheim, Paris, Tokyo and Florida.

The attractions division posted double-digit growth in revenue and profit for five years straight. In the past two years, while Disney’s stock price languished and many divisions faltered, operating profit at the parks rose 27% while studio profits tumbled 89%, to $116 million.

When Green took on a strategic role as chairman of Walt Disney Attractions in December 1998, the company called him “a driving force behind the recent expansion of Walt Disney World as well as the current expansions of Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland.”

The deal for the Hong Kong park, long an important project on Disney’s wish list, was praised by analysts. Negotiated by Green, the deal calls for the tourism-minded Hong Kong government to bear 90% of the cost and Disney to get 80% of the profit.

With Pressler already running operations, Green’s departure will have little immediate impact on Disneyland and the other theme parks and resorts, which employ more than 77,000 people, including 12,000 in Anaheim.

But the expansion that marked Green’s tenure will probably slow. Under Green, Disney went from five parks open and one in development to seven open and four in the works.

Pressler, a rising star praised for his work at the Disney Stores, oversaw the detailed development of Disney’s California Adventure, a second Anaheim theme park scheduled to open next year. But he is still growing into his expanded role at the company.

Pressler’s tasks recently have included downsizing the Imagineering division and searching for more savings at the parks, which have provoked hard feelings among employees.

In a recent letter to shareholders, Eisner said the focus now is on maximizing profits from existing operations so Disney can carve a profitable niche on the Internet and strive to improve struggling divisions such as consumer products.

Green said he decided to go to Navigation Technologies after the Chicago-area company made him “a very, very generous offer involving an equity position in a company that’s ready for a big expansion and not far from going public.”

Unlike the Internet start-ups that have hired many other Disney executives, Navigation Technologies is an established business. The small, privately held company is poised to grow by applying its digital map databases to hand-held wireless computers and similar uses.

Eisner spokesman John Dreyer said Green knew the company would expand “when the time and place and circumstances are right.”

As for overemphasizing theme park earnings, Dreyer said, “I cannot imagine that any of our executives would be negative about profits, especially any that have run our businesses.”

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Profile: Judson C. Green

Age: 47

* Old position: Chairman, Walt Disney Attractions

* New position: Chief executive, Navigation Technologies Corp.

* Background: Left Arthur Young accounting firm in Chicago to become internal auditor for Walt Disney World in 1981. Rose to vice president of finance and planning. Named chief financial officer of Disneyland Paris in 1987, CFO of Walt Disney Co. in 1989, president of Walt Disney Attractions in 1991, chairman in December 1998.

* Achievements: Disney parks and resorts profit grew from $500 million in 1991 to $1.45 billion in 1999 during Green’s tenure. Theme parks (including those under development) grew from six to 11, hotel rooms from 10,661 to 28,270.

* Education: DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind., economics major, music composition minor; MBA from University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

* Hobbies: Jazz piano, skiing

Source: Times research