Page 120 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

We built a motel at Highway 6 and 1-75, near Jasper; another one at Ellisville, at US 41 and 1-75;
another one at Bushnell, where 1-75 intersected one ofthe main State Highways which ran in an east­
west direction.

Since W.L. Summers was also a Builder, he was of immense help to us in getting these motels
constructed, and W.L. later in life went into the business of constructing motels strictly for the purpose
of resale. He even went so far as to develop some motels in the State of Maine, near Bar Harbor, and
did quite well in his motels ventures.

In getting together and deciding what we were going to call the business, we sat around the table
drinking coffee at Rudy’s Sportsmen’s Restaurant, and kicked around the possibility of several different
names to name our Corporation. We finally settled on a Corporate name that included Kermit’s name
and R.A.’s name, and ended up calling it Greene-Horne Corporation, and that name really told our story,
seeing as how we were all simple country boys that had moved to town after we got grown.

We did quite well with our Interstate Interchange Properties, and after everybody else realized the
potential doing what we were doing, we went on to other things.

After it was announced that Walt Disney was building Disney World in Orange County, and even
though Disney was building their own hotels, we foresaw that there was going to be a tremendous
demand for tourist facilities in Orange County, and we acquired a tract of land at Lake Buena Vista,
which happened to adjoin the property on which Disney built the Disney World Hospital, which they
built for the purpose of accommodating customers who might need hospitalization while visiting the
resort area.

We built the World Inn, which was a seven-story motel consisting of three restaurants, two bars, and
238 guest rooms. It was quite an under-taking for three country boys, but we managed to build it by
borrowing only $4,000,000.00, which would be unheard of today, and our rates when we opened in
1972 were $14.00 per room per night double occupancy.

The rates at that motel would probably be ten times that amount by now.

When the gasoline shortage occurred during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, it wrecked the tourist
business in Orange County, and many of the motels had to declare bankruptcy because there were
simply no tourists traveling. In many cases, a person could not even find any gasoline to buy, and the
stations that had gasoline would sometimes have a line of cars a half mile long waiting to get to the gas
pump. Furthermore, there was a period of time in those days when it was against the law to even sell gas
on Sundays. That was the biggest thing that killed the tourist business, and there was just nothing we
could do about it.

However, due to our location in such close proximity to Disney World itself, we managed to survive. By
that time, R.A. Greene had gotten out of the Partnership, and only Kermit and I were left. We would
have gone under, except that it was during that period of time that I was able to sell the Bar None Ranch,
which I have related elsewhere in this book as having purchased from Gordon Granger, and I was able
to sell it for cash at about four times the amount that I had paid Mr. Granger for it. That cash really
saved our lives as far as being able to keep the motel open, and then not too much later, after we had
survived, we were able to sell the motel at a good profit.

In fact, I sold out my share of it to Kermit and he later sold it to another group. They, in turn, sold it to
the Days Inn Chain, and to the best of my knowledge that is what the motel is named today.

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