Have you ever wanted to live in a dystopian world where major corporations are breaching into small communities, leeching their culture and dropping wonderful suburbia over the woods and rivers you were raised in and love? Well, Asteria is for you!

Disney is bringing the huge joke it calls “Storyliving” to Pittsboro, North Carolina, the place I’ve lived for over half of my life, the place I have been able to call home for the longest time. It’s the place where I’ve come to make friends, go to school, grow into adulthood and put down roots with a church — shoutout Pittsboro United Methodist.

Storyliving is some vague concept made up by Disney that asserts claims of connecting communities back to their historic past or something of the like. Essentially, it’s a buzzword that entices fans to fork over their money to Disney for the privilege to live in a Disney neighborhood.

Many of the wonderful residents of Pittsboro I’ve come to know are, to put it lightly, displeased with Disney coming into their community and dropping what I can only assume are homes costing millions of dollars.

That’s one of my biggest issues — Disney’s presence will likely raise the prices tenfold of things like healthcare and groceries for current residents, some of whom may already be struggling to afford these.

Some people in Chatham County seriously struggle to pay for food. In 2021, the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina stated 13% of people in Chatham County are food insecure. Why then do we need a Disney neighborhood that will certainly bring premium grocery stores to the area rather than working to help out and improve the lives of our fellow human beings. 

But who cares about the culture and community of Pittsboro, we want Mickey! He’s so fun and silly, it doesn’t matter what others can afford because we can live in our cute new neighborhood with other Disney adults.

I would apologize for my vitriolic outburst, but I won’t. This is truly ridiculous. The first community Disney built is in Rancho Mirage, California, and while I really do hate what Disney is doing with these Storyliving communities, maybe California is the type of place this sort of nonsense belongs. 

Or, hear me out, we could just not have these communities at all. My guess as to the reason why Disney didn’t put this directly in Raleigh — but considers it “close” to Raleigh — or Apex is it would be too expensive to build. That’s right, expensive! A multibillion dollar company — billion with a ‘B’ — is too scared or stingy to dish out the cash to put this ridiculous community in or near Raleigh.

I’m a business major and can appreciate the value a lot of corporations can bring to communities, especially if they find themselves being socially responsible and treating employees well. But Disney is pushing the amount of leeway I’m willing to give because I don’t see how this brings value to anyone but, one, Disney and, two, Disney.

Disney describes Raleigh in relation to this neighborhood as “nearby” which is completely laughable. On a really good day, Raleigh is probably thirty minutes or so from Pittsboro, and on a bad day it can be as long as 45 minutes to an hour. This is classic Disney: bending the truth a little to make sure it can make their sales and sell its homes.

I’m going to leave you with this: I’m not saying people can’t be Disney fans. Some of their classic works such as “Monsters, Inc.,” “The Incredibles” or “The Emperor’s New Groove” are something I think brought value and happiness to a lot of kids like myself, but this is where we should be drawing the line.

Pittsboro is a small, tight-knit community of people who have worked hard to make it the amazing place it is, and all of that time and effort will have been wasted if we let Disney add this massive development into it. This could be just the beginning of what Disney has planned for the United States, as it’s possible they could keep targeting small communities for cheap land to build more of these communities on.

I urge all of you to condemn this kind of behavior from big companies like Disney because heaven knows they’re not the only ones out there doing this sort of thing. Voice your distaste with them online and in any way you can. But why should you care? Disney is shoving their way into a small community, something that is becoming more rare in the modern-day United States. Who knows where this will stop? If this catches on, Disney could be throwing these communities down left and right.