The official announcement was made here by Gov. Jeb Bush. In an unconventional move, Bush and his six-member cabinet voted to spend $11 million in taxpayer money to buy development rights at the park from the Trust for Public Land, a Washington, DC environmental group. The development rights will permanently bar commercial development, such as apartments and office buildings, in Cypress Gardens.
After 10 months of negotiations, the Trust is paying the park's owners, Larry Maxwell and William Reynolds, principals in First Gardens LLC, $22 million, or $154,930 per acre, for the park.
Kent Buescher, owner/operator of the Wild Adventures attraction in Valdosta, GA, is acquiring the major portion of the park, 120 acres, from the Trust for a contract price of $7 million, or $58.333 per acre--but is paying nothing down for the property, Polk County industrial brokers in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com.
Buescher is buying the property with funds loaned from the Trust, brokers who have followed the complex funding deal for the past 10 months tell GlobeSt.com. Terms of Buescher's funding deal with the Trust were not disclosed. The Georgia entrepreneur told Bush and the Cabinet he plans to invest $36 million over the next 18 months in park renovations and the installation of new attractions.
The remaining 30-acre botanical gardens, considered the centerpiece of the park, is being purchased by Polk County and the City of Winter Haven for $2.5 million, or $83,333 per acre. The Trust also has an option to separately buy another 7.1 acres on Swann Point at the north end of the botanical gardens.
Brokers close to the transaction tell GlobeSt.com Cypress Garden owners Maxwell and Reynolds "put a little pressure on the deal" in the closing hours of negotiations by announcing they are prepared to sell the entire 150-acre park to a national big-box retailer who is ready to break ground immediately on a new venture.
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