GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Pugliese Closes $140M Land Deal

YEEHAW JUNCTION, FL-Closing a secretive six-month deal, Delray Beach, FL developer Anthony V. Pugliese III has acquired a 27,400-acre citrus-and-cattle ranching tract for an estimated $140 million. The acreage is in the remote hamlet of Yeehaw Junction, which has a permanent population of 270 residents, according to the most recent numbers posted with area chambers of commerce.

Pugliese, president of the Pugliese Co., a major South Florida developer of class A office, warehouse and condominium product, contracted to buy the land in May from the Latt Maxcy Corp., a 100-year-old cattle ranching, banking and citrus growing conglomerate based in Frostproof, FL. GlobeSt.com reported that transaction previously.

The Pugliese acquisition is being compared by Orlando area brokers with the 1965 secretive deal the late Walt Disney made with about 50 private landowners to purchase 27,000 acres in Osceola County for $5.4 million. Pugliese’s tract is 60 miles south of Walt Disney World and about 90 southeast of Downtown Orlando.

Pugliese and officials at Latt Maxcy Corp. couldn’t be reached at GlobeSt.com’s publication deadline to learn what the buyer plans to develop on the site. However, persons in a position to know in Polk and Osceola counties tell GlobeSt.com Pugliese plans a mixed-use campus of office, retail, residential, industrial, hotel and recreational space in a development of regional impact that would take 20 years to complete.

In a prepared statement, Pat Wilson, president and chairman of Latt Maxcy Corp., says the land sale was part of a planned asset-diversification strategy. “The board decided collectively that the market was strong enough at this time to diversify some of our holdings,” Wilson says. “The Latt Maxcy Corp. is not ending our ranching or citrus business. We are simply diversifying some assets into other real estate functions.”