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Michael Ovitz, who had a brief but extremely lucrative career as president of Walt Disney Co. in the mid 1990s, might emerge as the latest embodiment of corporate spending run amok.
Though it has been eight years since his abrupt termination from Disney in December 1996, the sordid episode is being rehashed in Chancery Court in Georgetown, Del., thanks to a shareholder lawsuit.
Investors have sued Disney and Ovitz over an estimated $140-million severance package the onetime top Hollywood talent agent received after just 14 months with the entertainment company. While that gold-plated parachute might seem excessive, it followed a pattern of extravagant spending by Ovitz while he was in office, the lawsuit claims.
Among the allegations of misspending were Ovitz's personal use of the corporate aircraft to the tune of $650,000, charged to the company tab. He billed the company $100,000 for his season tickets to Lakers and Dodgers games and $350,000 for home entertainment, including "home-catered breakfasts."
The plaintiffs' piece de resistance: the $2-million renovation of Ovitz's office at Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif.
The law firm representing the shareholders has declined to specify how many square feet of space were included in the multimillion-dollar do-over. Nor has anyone answered this simple question: How can you spend $2-million to renovate an office?
Easy, said some interior decorators and designers in the Tampa Bay area.
"It sounds shocking to the average reader, but it doesn't surprise me," said Sandra B. Chancey, whose interior design business in Tampa includes office and residential work.
"Shareholders are not in the real world. They don't know the price of things."
Chancey said high-rent offices can reach costs of $100 a square feet for renovation, while higher-end homes can run up to $400 a square foot.
"Two-million dollars isn't what it used to be," she said.
On the witness stand Wednesday, Ovitz said he had no input into the renovation plans and even wrote memos to Disney executives "expressing concern about the building and the cost," especially after he learned the work was being done at night.
His lawyers said the project included areas outside Ovitz's office on the building's fifth and sixth floors and had been ordered by Disney's chief executive Michael Eisner, his boss and onetime close friend.
The Disney spending was "decadent," said Linda Noble Welch of Deranian and Noble in St. Petersburg.
"It certainly can be done - the handrail on the staircase could be gold," Welch said. "But it's a shame that much would be spent when there's so much good that money could go to."
Jose Forns, who owns a design/build company in Tampa, compared the Ovitz job to work he's doing on an 11,000 square-foot office space with 30 employees.
"It's a shell building and they're putting in all new carpet, ceiling, bathrooms and cabinetry, with lots of upgrades," he said. "It's costing just under $400,000."
Still, Forns and other designers say it would be possible to run up a $2-million renovation without too much trouble.
"It can add up quick if you get extravagant," Forns said. "I'd do a job like that in a heartbeat."
Among local designers' suggestions for no-holds-barred decorating: Use imported silk wallcoverings at $200 a yard or exotic hardwood paneling. Cover the floor with $100-a-yard carpeting or use marble with custom-made inlaid logos.
Add fireplaces, a private spa and a kitchen outfitted with top-of-the-line appliances. Buy masterpiece artworks for the walls and antique accessories. Build a high-tech conference room with remote-controlled curtains, lighting and projection screen.
Just as details on Ovitz's office are scarce, so too is information on the space's fate once he was ejected, or - as he put it in testimony - "pushed out the sixth-floor window."
But Forns said he has had the experience of renovating an executive's office only to be told to redo the job six months later when a successor with different tastes was hired.
"You can't resell the stuff, you've just got to to throw it away," he said. "Nothing is more disheartening."
Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or 727 892-2996.