• The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District approved a $17 billion development deal with Disney.
• The development plan could allow Disney World to build a fifth major theme park and two minor parks.
• Disney must award at least 50% of all construction work to Florida businesses.

Central Florida's tourism district unanimously approved a $17 billion development deal with Disney that could mean a new era for the company's profitable theme parks.

Members of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District's board of supervisors pushed through the landmark deal on Wednesday evening during a meeting at its Lake Buena Vista headquarters.

The deal comes amid a détente between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose administration took control of the local tourism district from the entertainment conglomerate last February. Disney had previously self-managed any development in the area with little government oversight.

The resulting legal battle between Disney and the DeSantis administration began in 2022 but ended this March when both parties agreed to a settlement.

"This is the day we have all been looking forward to," Board Member Brian Aungst said prior to the vote. "Walt Disney World is inextricably intertwined in the fabric of Central Florida."

After the vote, Board Member Charbel Barakat thanked DeSantis for his leadership, inspiration, and "tireless efforts" to reach a deal with Disney.

The development deal, a version of which Business Insider reviewed, will allow Disney to spend billions of dollars on its Walt Disney World properties over the next 10 to 20 years.

It will also permit Disney to build a fifth major theme park and two minor theme parks — something Disney fans have fantasized about for years. Reddit boards and Disney-themed discussion forums have long speculated about the so-called "fifth gate," or a potential fifth theme park that would join the four existing locations.

Disney hasn't discussed how or when it could pursue the massive project, but fans have clamored for a villain-centric theme park in the past. Another popular idea was a Star Wars-based attraction, which came to life in 2019 when Disney unveiled Galaxy's Edge.

The development deal also authorizes Disney to add more rooms to its Central Florida hotel and expand its retail and restaurant space.

In return, Disney must award at least 50% of its related construction work to Florida-based businesses and fund at least $10 million toward "attainable housing projects." The company must also donate at least 100 acres of its land to the tourism district.

In a hearing last week, local businesses came out in support of the deal, which they view as an opportunity to grow the local economy and increase sales.

"The one thing we're sure of is that investment and reinvestment guarantee growth and excellence," George Miliotes, the owner and operator of Wine Bar George in Disney Springs, told board members. "So, when we see the billion-dollar number in front of the investment that's on the table, we get very excited."

He added: "We know that we're securing the future if we make this investment."

• Laurene Powell Jobs has dropped millions of dollars on four adjacent oceanside properties in Malibu.
• The billionaire investor recently spent $94 million on a property, according to The LA Times. 
• The property is located in Paradise Cove, an affluent Malibu neighborhood home to other billionaires.

Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire investor and widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, recently dropped $94 million on a prime oceanfront Malibu property, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The Paradise Cove plot is the latest addition to Powell Jobs' growing portfolio of properties in one of the country's most affluent neighborhoods. Since 2015, Powell Jobs has spent more than $170 million on neighboring Malibu properties in an apparent effort to build a sprawling compound on some of Southern California's most expensive cliffs.

Powell Jobs' real estate ventures are part of a larger trend in recent years that has seen the ultrawealthy buy up neighboring properties in order to build themselves secluded enclaves.

The recent $94 million purchase is the largest home sale in Southern California in 2024 so far, the LA Times reported. Paradise Cove has become a haven for billionaires like WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Last year, Beyoncé and Jay-Z spent $200 million on a Paradise Cove mansion in a record-breaking real estate purchase.

According to the newspaper, Powell Jobs' new property includes four acres and a 1950s L-shaped home measuring 3,399 square feet and featuring four bedrooms and four bathrooms.

The billionaire investor bought her first Paradise Cove property in 2015, spending $44 million on a 13,000-square-foot home she eventually demolished. In 2017, Powell Jobs purchased a $16.5 million home next door and, in 2021, a five-bedroom cottage for $17.5 million, The Times reported.

A mansion Powell Jobs is reportedly building in Paradise Cove was damaged by the Woolsey wildfire that burned through Los Angeles County in 2018, The Real Deal reported that year.

When Jobs died in 2011, Powell Jobs inherited a fortune, including a massive ownership stake in Disney, Apple shares, and a 260-foot superyacht.

She is worth an estimated $14.7 billion, according to Forbes, and serves as founder and president of The Emerson Collective, an investing firm focused on reforms to education, health, climate, and immigration.

• After graduating, Lauri Union took over her family's failing corrugated roofing business in 1992.
• As a 27-year-old president and CEO, she managed to turn the company around and sell it years later.
• Union shared five principles she said helped her save the sinking business tied to her name.

I never set out to take over the family business. My grandfather started a corrugated roofing company in North Carolina in 1946, and in the 1990s it was run by my parents while I finished business school. My plan after graduation was to live in Boston with my husband.

But when my father fell ill, the company was in dire financial straits. My mother, who had no business leadership experience, stepped in and tried to turn things around, asking me for help. The business seemed hopeless, but I wanted to help clear my parents' debts.

That meant that in 1992, at age 27, I became president and CEO of a sinking ship. Morale was low, and we'd just lost our biggest client, who contributed 25% of our revenue.

I had to overhaul the company and was able to turn it around to profitability, eventually growing our staff head count to 350 and selling to a private equity firm in 2004. Here are five lessons for running a family business that helped me get there.

Check your ego at the door, and be comfortable with saying 'I don't know'

People often think being a leader means knowing what to do. When I joined my family's business, I arrived with prestigious academic degrees including an MBA from Harvard. But I only worked there before for 6 weeks in one summer, so I knew very little about it. I also had never led any organization.

I quickly realized that the people who worked in the business had tremendous knowledge and that I could contribute far more by asking open-ended questions than by trying to take control and tell people what to do. I spent most of my first few months interviewing people in the company and figuring out the business.

As a result, within a few short months, I had more knowledge about the business and industry than virtually anyone else in the company. While each person knew their role, I was the only one who had interviewed so many people that I had a broad perspective on the company. I envisioned it as everyone having their own pie slice, but my goal was to see the entire pie.

Stay close to your family, but don't let family emotions interfere with your decisions.

Working with family can bring up strong emotions, like frustration when a parent tells you what to do in front of other employees you are trying to lead. Or a feeling of rejection when a parent doesn't recognize what you consider to be a great achievement.

Families pass emotions between members, so negative emotions can spiral. Those negative emotions can lead people to make decisions that make them feel better, rather than decisions that work best for the business. And those negative emotions can seriously damage family relationships.

Be aware of your emotions and empathetic to your family, but be willing to make decisions that achieve shared goals, even if they are hard. Spending personal time away from work with my mom also helped us to stay close, even if we might disagree about something at work.

It's easier to get employees on board with your family's values. Use that.

Family businesses have a superpower in their ability to consistently lead through a set of values that employees and customers can relate to. That makes the work of running the business meaningful to you and to other stakeholders.

In my case, I realized that longtime employees remembered what my grandfather's company used to stand for, and were discouraged by many of the firm's more recent practices. Employees were lying to customers, and everyone behaved like they were on a losing team.

When I met one of the firm's retired former workers, he recalled how my grandfather insisted on not increasing roofing prices after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. That story spoke to me, so I shared it at a company meeting.

Other employees stood up and told similar stories. At the end of the meeting, we agreed that whatever happened, we would always do the right thing, even if that meant lower profits. We would never lie to a customer and always admit if we couldn't deliver what a client wanted.

That was a turning point for the company. Our employees felt they could be authentic, and it guided the company going forward and contributed to our growth.

Don't be afraid to take the business in a new direction from what your parents did

Family businesses can be slow to change because holding on to traditions or long-term relationships with employees and customers is valuable. Parents leading a family business may expect their children to join and follow in their footsteps.

But the average business today only lasts around 10 years. Families that try to get the next generation to follow the mold are at risk. The next generation may not be fully engaged, and the business may not be able to keep up with the times.

My advice is to find your own shoes and lead the business forward.

In my case, what was obvious about my family company was that it was a not very good business, and poorly positioned in a declining market. Our customer base was shrinking, our equipment was old, and employees hadn't been given raises for five years. We had six facilities in multiple states, most piling up with old products.

As I took over, we decided to change the company's model entirely. Instead of delivering in bulk to lots of customers in a large area, we focused on a small area of clients and delivered smaller shipments quickly. Eventually, we had enough money to buy one new machine, and we built on that success from there.

Don't try to live up to someone else's leadership style.

In family businesses, leaders can shape their own leadership style. Understand how others have led the business in the past, but don't be limited by that.

I was a young woman running a business in a male-dominated construction materials business. All leaders in the business, not just positions like the CEO, were men. Many managers' approaches were more authoritarian, with harsh language and aggressive stances.

I wasn't comfortable with that, but it was my family's business, so I could experiment with different ways to lead. I tried to be more calm and curious.

Finding my own leadership style, rather than trying to live up to someone else's, made me a more effective and genuine leader.

• Eight former SpaceX employees are suing the company and Elon Musk.
• They say they were fired after speaking up about a hostile work environment.
• The lawsuit alleges Musk treated women as "sexual objects" and used lewd banter.

Eight former SpaceX employees have sued the company and its CEO, Elon Musk, alleging they were wrongfully fired for speaking out against a hostile work environment in 2022.

The suit, filed in California, notes employees wrote an open letter to SpaceX management about their concerns. Musk then personally ordered their terminations, the suit alleges.

The complaint alleges Musk "runs his company in the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the 'Animal House' environment that if they don't like it they can seek employment elsewhere."

The lawsuit accuses Musk and other upper management of appearing in a video that made light of sexual misconduct, which was screened at an employee holiday party.

One scene shows VP of human resources Brian Bjelde "having an employee demonstrate how to spank him in the 'correct' manner," according to the suit.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

"Filing this suit marks an important milestone in our quest for justice, for holding leadership accountable, and for implementing responsible changes in workplace policies," one of the plaintiffs, Paige Holland-Thielen, said in a statement.

The lawsuit accuses SpaceX of creating a hostile work environment, retaliation, failure to prevent harassment, gender discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and wrongful termination.

The same group of former SpaceX employee previously filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging they were targeted for retaliation.

But that case has been tied up after SpaceX sued the agency and said its enforcement processes violated the US Constitution. In May, an appeals court granted Musk's firm a temporary block that keeps the NLRB from pursuing its case.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal published a report on Wednesday alleging Musk had inappropriate interactions with female SpaceX employees, including a sexual relationship with a former intern.

The refreshed allegations of sexual misconduct come at a complicated time for Musk. On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will vote on Musk's contentious $55 billion pay package, potentially handing the billionaire a massive boost in wealth.

• The Houthis struck a commercial vessel with an uncrewed surface vessel on Wednesday.
• It's the first time the rebels have scored a hit with a USV amid their ongoing Red Sea attacks.
• Past attempts have been unsuccessful.

The Houthis used an uncrewed surface vessel to strike a commercial ship in the Red Sea on Wednesday, the US military revealed.

The Iran-backed rebels have employed USVs, also known as naval drones or drone boats, as part of their attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, but they have been unable to actually score a hit with one until now.

The likely explosive-laden vessel struck the M/V Tutor, a Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carrier, US Central Command said, noting in its statement on the incident that "the impact of the USV caused severe flooding and damage to the engine room."

Prior to the release of the CENTCOM statement, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, an element of the British Royal Navy, posted an incident bulletin earlier on Wednesday saying that a "small craft" had hit a vessel off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea. It described the craft as white in color and between 5-7 meters (16-23 feet) in length.

The UKMTO later said that the vessel is "taking on water, and not under command of the crew." In a follow-on update, it said the ship reported being hit "for a second time by an unknown airborne projectile," and "military authorities are assisting."

The current status of the vessel that was hit is unclear.

One official at the Ambrey maritime security firm told The War Zone, which first reported on the incident, that the Tutor is a "dead ship" and will require "salvage operations."

The Houthis have employed USVs in years past, although it wasn't until earlier this year that the rebels actually began using the drones as part of their monthslong attacks on shipping lanes.

Wednesday's attack marks the first successful strike by a Houthi USV during the campaign. Prior to this incident, the drone boats were either destroyed by Western forces, or they were detonated in the water without hitting anything.

Beyond USVs, the Houthis have relied on their sizeable arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, as well as various one-way attack drones, to wreak havoc off the coast of Yemen. Since the fall, the rebels have used these weapons to hit a number of commercial vessels. It has sunk one and killed crew members on another.

Over the weekend, the Houthis hit two commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden with anti-ship missiles. In both incidents, however, the vessels managed to continue underway. The Tutor is the latest attack.

The string of attacks comes after the Pentagon recently extended the deployment of the US Navy carrier strike group that's been battling the Houthis, as American intelligence officials warn that the conflict may go on for a while.