Area industrial real estate brokers in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com the deal will go down by year end. Siegel and Falwell couldn't be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. However, Siegel associates and brokers who have worked with the developer tell GlobeSt.com Siegel, 67, and Falwell, 70, have met several times this year to discuss the project.
"(Siegel) likes the deal," a broker who has participated in several of his past transactions tells GlobeSt.com. The project will include a 2,000-seat auditorium, according to brokerage sources.
The project is in the same general area of the closed Cypress Gardens water attraction, another undertaking in which Siegel hopes to get involved by year end. The Trust For Public Land of Washington, DC is putting the 67-year-old property up for sale bids in November, sources close to the deal tell GlobeSt.com.
The trust contracted to buy 142 acres of the 160-acre park two weeks ago for $22 million, or $154,930 per acre. The trust plans to sell the development rights to the state for an undetermined amount and sell the operational rights to the property to a private developer. That strategy would keep Cypress Gardens from being commercially developed.
The planned Siegel-Falwell project is also in the Polk County vicinity of two other resort properties Siegel purchased in 2002. The developer bought the former 1,700-acre River Ranch Acres estate near Lake Wales for $6 million and the 1,000-acre, 750-room Grenelefe Golf & Tennis Club resort at Winter Haven for $12.8 million, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.
"If Siegel could acquire Cypress Gardens and do the deal with Falwell, he would have four major destination properties within a 50-mile radius," a Polk County broker, who could be participating in a near-future Siegel transaction, tells GlobeSt.com. "Siegel would be king of the hill in Central Florida's tourism-property domain and could save a bundle by marketing all of the Polk County properties in a single package.
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