GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Sugarloaf Asking Price Sends County Gasping

Ground-breaking is tentatively scheduled for 2003 with completion of the estimated $1.2 billion mixed-use project anticipated by 2015, a 12-year buildout. Reaves is under a state-mandated deadline to start the venture by 2006 or permanently lose the project's development order which was extended last year for the last time.

Reaves' plans follow a flat rejection by Lake County commissioners Feb. 26 to buy the entire property for $25.8 million or $18,000 per acre (41 cents per sf). Reaves hasn't disclosed what price he is paying for the dirt.

But area land brokers tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity the contract with Cox and Price is probably for about $19.4 million ($13,500 per acre/31 cents per sf) or about 25% less than Reaves sought from Lake County.

Elected officials were expecting a top asking price by Reaves of $11.5 million or $8,025 per acre (18 cents per sf). They based that figure on a 1998 appraisal of $7 million or $4,885 per acre (11 cents per sf) by the Florida Public land Trust, a conservation group.

"Those numbers went by the boards 20 years ago," a Lake County industrial land appraiser tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

A Clermont commercial broker who asked for anonymity tells GlobeSt.com, "Those commissioners needed to come down here to Clermont in south Lake County and see for themselves what is happening in residential, commercial and industrial development growth. Then they would better understand an asking price of $18,000 per acre in this environment."

Small tracts of up to 90 acres near Sugarloaf Mountain have recently sold for $16,000 (37 cents per sf) to $22,000 (51 cents per sf) per acre, according to Lake County real estate records. Lake County School Board paid $1.5 million or $16,700 per acre (38 cents per sf) a 90-acre parcel south of State Road 50.

Large land buyers such as Robert "Bobby" Ginn, president/owner, Ginn Co., Palm Coast, FL invariably get better deals on larger tracts. Ginn, for example, paid $10.7 million or $9,000 per acre (21 cents per sf) in 2001 for his Pine Island dirt near Sugarloaf Mountain.

Reaves' tentative development schedule is the first in 10 years for a project that has been approved twice by separate governors, the Florida Cabinet and villified by every environmental group in Central Florida since it was first proposed in 1991.

The approved master plan for the Reaves project atop Sugarloaf calls for a maximum 2,259 single-family homes, 175 multifamily units, 120,000 sf of commercial, two 18-hole golf courses and a church.

Sugarloaf Mountain, the highest peak in Central Florida, overlooks Lake Apopka between County Road 561 and County Road 455, 10 minutes from Clermont, FL and Montverde, FL.