Buyer Contracts for 28,000 Acres in Estimated $840M Deal

The deal would be the largest of its kind in Central Florida since the late Walt Disney secretly acquired 30,000 acres in 1965 in Orange and Osceola counties for an estimated $6 million, or an average $200 per acre, to develop Walt Disney World, sources in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com.

The 28,000 acres lie on a 44-square-mile tract 60 miles south of Walt Disney World and about 90 miles south of Downtown Orlando. The deal is tentatively set to close this summer, sources intimate with the transaction tell GlobeSt.com.

Latt Maxcy Corp. officials couldn't be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline to learn further details. However, industrial brokers familiar with recent large land sales in Osceola and Polk counties tell GlobeSt.com any commercial undertaking planned for the site is at least five years away from groundbreaking because of the local and state paperwork that would be required to rezone the land from its existing agricultural status.

YeeHaw Junction is a town of 22,000 residents. The 28,000 acres abut State Road 60 to the north and the Florida Turnpike to the east. The tract lies near the southern tip of Osceola County, 35 miles from the nearest city. Sources familiar with the transaction tell GlobeSt.com the estimated price of the Latt Maxcy land is based on recent large sales in nearby counties.

Butler Ridge Development Inc., a private Florida investment group little known in the general commercial real estate community here, paid the Seminole Tribe of Florida $25 million, or $20,833 per acre (48 cents per sf), for a prime 1,200-acre tract along West Lake Tohopekaliga in Osceola County, 20 miles south of Downtown Orlando, in January, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

When the Seminoles purchased the land in 2001, the tribe paid the Partin Ranch family in St. Cloud $28.7 million or about $28,091 per acre (60 cents per sf). Brokers in St. Cloud and Kissimmee tell GlobeSt.com that any future development on the site would have closer ties to Vero Beach than to Kissimmee or Orlando.

Brokerage sources acknowledge land prices for smaller parcels in and around YeeHaw Junction have asking prices of $3,000 to $7,000 per acre. They tell GlobeSt.com, however, the size, location and potential development options of the 28,000-acre tract should bring a higher per-acre price.