Comparable land, already zoned for commercial/retail/entertainment use, would go for at least $1 million per acre or $23 per sf, area brokers familiar with Lake Buena Vista, FL submarket prices tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity. This tract, however, is in neighboring and largely rural Lake County.
Ray Maxwell, vice president/administration, Reedy Creek Improvement District, confirmed the deal. Reedy Creek is Disney's private governmental arm. A closing date hasn't been set. Disney bought the tract in 1992 to use as a wastewater runoff area from its theme parks. However, new technology makes the retention pond land unnecessary and surplus property for Disney, Reedy Creek officials say.
GlobeSt.com couldn't reach Karl at publication deadline to learn the company's plans for the site in a hot residential development market, 15 miles northwest of Interstate 4 and a quarter of a mile west of U.S. 27 in neighboring Lake County. Karl's bid was the highest in the six months the property has been on the market, Maxwell confirms.
The deal has surprised some area brokers who tell GlobeSt.com the theme park had considered developing a new attraction on the site 10 years ago when Disney bought the dirt for $14 million or $6,711 per acre (15 cents per sf).
The late Walt Disney secretly assembled the park's original 27,000 acres between 1965 and 1969 from 100 private owners for an average $200 per acre or a quarter of a cent per sf, according to real estate records in Orange and Osceola counties. Disney has grown its existing enclave to 32,000 acres in Orange, Osceola and Lake counties.
Trevor W. Hall Jr., who heads Colliers Arnold's land sales division in Orlando, tells GlobeSt.com determining if the price paid by Karl Corp. is above, below or right on current market value is often tricky.
"Usually, those who outbid others for land have a strategy for maximizing the value that others missed," Hall says. That strategy often means holding the land for a period or selling off some of the dirt to lower the buyer's initial cost.
"The big questions center around offsite improvements and exactions that will be required in order to arrange vesting for development," Hall tells GlobeSt.com. "Frequently, large tracts are stalled for development until the infrastructure to serve those impacts can be arranged."
Getting the infrastructure in place "takes a long time and even more money," the broker says. "We now include school provisions in the mix and those are just as costly as roads."
On the Disney acreage, Hall says Disney "rigorously obtained consumptive use permits for that land, so the water issues should be somewhat better than for tracts without such rights."
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