Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood Jr. (December 17, 1920 – March 14, 1992) was an American developer of theme parks and planned communities.
SRI, located in Menlo Park, California, is a nonprofit research and development organization founded by the trustees of Stanford University.
Wood was hired away from the Stanford Research Institute during 1954 by the Disney brothers, Walt and Roy, to become vice president and general manager of the Disneyland project.
Walt Disney also raised a number of issues that involved Wood, including that the man he hired was receiving too much credit for Disneyland.
[2] Another employee, Van Arsdale France, believed that the relationship would not survive, because Wood and Walt Disney both were fiercely independent.
[1] Wood's firm helped create Magic Mountain (later Heritage Square, now defunct) at Golden, Colorado during 1957, Pleasure Island (in Wakefield, Massachusetts, during 1959, Freedomland U.S.A.[4] (on the current site of Co-op City and its adjacent shopping center in the Bronx, a borough of New York City), during 1960, and initial work on Six Flags Over Texas before Marco employee Randall Duell took over the project.
Freedomland also faced significant financial problems that led to the filing of bankruptcy, but the motive for the failure, unknown to Wood or the public at the time, was to obtain land variances to build the world's largest co-operative housing development on New York City marshland.
In the case of Freedomland, the landowner, investors, politicians, city planners and unions maintained other development ideas for the property.
Around 1970 Woods developed the vast and sprawling bedroom community of Spring Creek, Nevada, lying between Elko and Lamoille.
[citation needed] In 1987, Wood became an assistant to the chairman of Lorimar Telepictures and helped merge the company with Time Warner.
Recreational Enterprises Division, played an instrumental role in the design and development of Warner Bros. Movie World theme park in Gold Coast, Queensland Australia.
At the time of his death from lung cancer, Wood had been married for 20 years to actress Joanne Dru, the sister of actor, singer and television game show host Peter Marshall.
Wood was honored by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) when he was inducted posthumously into its Hall of Fame in 1994.
"Three Years in Wonderland" (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) by Todd James Pierce is dedicated to the relationship of the Disney Brothers with Wood as they created Disneyland.