ORLANDO-St. Joe Co., parent of locally-based St. Joe Commercial, is contracting with its majority stockholder and its main beneficiary in a stock repurchase program that aims to increase the company's value by spreading increased earnings over fewer shares.
ORLANDO-The 30,000-acre Lake Buena Vista, FL theme park is quietly emerging as Orange County Convention Center's largest rival. Walt Disney World plans to convert the Millennium Village at Epcot next summer into World Show Place, a 40,000-sf meeting center that can handle 4,000 attendees.
ORLANDO-Locally-based Corona Cigar Co. plans to open a 5,000-sf outlet next summer at Plaza Venezia, under construction on Sand Lake Road at Dr. Phillips Boulevard in southwest Orange County. The new location will be four times larger than the existing store in suburban Ocoee, FL. Area rents average $20 per sf.
ORLANDO-The 5,200-acre, eight-year-old Carter Land Trust is down to its last 300 acres in southeast Orange County. Eagle Creek Development Corp. picked up the last large tract, 1,209 acres, for $10.28 million cash or $8,505 per acre (20 cents per sf).
ORLANDO-Commercial demand for 200,000 sf of new meeting space in the central business district is low, consultants find. Now Orlando Magic owner Rich DeVos is trying to find out if the 10-year-old, 17,500-sf , $110 million TD Waterhouse Center can be rebuilt and retrofitted to produce the $10 million additional revenue the team needs to break even annually. If it can't, the NBA team may look for new quarters in 2004.
ORLANDO-New York-born Harris Rosen, Florida's largest independent innkeeper with 6,000 rooms and another 1,500 on the drawing board, also plans to give the University of Central Florida a 20-acre tract to build the Rosen School of Hospitality Management.
ORLANDO-A consortium of international investors led by reclusive billionaire Joseph C. Lewis paid an estimated $10 million or about $4.36 million per acre ($100 per sf) for the block-long, 2.29-acre complex of empty storefronts in the center of Downtown.
CLERMONT, FL-The vociferous, 700-home Kings Ridge community, 25 miles west of Downtown Orlando, is fighting Boyd Development's plans to erect a 24-hour convenience store near the gated subdivision.
NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL-Locally-based Geopak Corp. paid Reynolds Metals Development Co. $1.17 million or $272,093 per acre ($6.25 per sf) for a 4.3-acre parcel near Interstate 75 and Shotgun Road in Sunrise, FL, Broward County, 30 miles north of Downtown Miami.
ORLANDO-The acquisition of the 26-agent Kathy Sanders Realty Inc., 38 miles north of Downtown, increases Arvida Realty Services Inc.'s Central Florida office count to eight. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
