Mormon Church Purchases 2% Of Florida For Half A Billion Dollars

Mormon Church Purchases 2% Of Florida For Half A Billion Dollars, A sect of the Mormon Church is poised to become the largest private landowner in the state of Florida after spending more than half a billion dollars to purchase hundreds of thousands of acres across three counties.

Representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints announced Thursday they had bought most of the real estate owned by the St. Joe development company for $565 million. Municipalities in Bay, Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty and Wakulla counties are included in the nearly 400,000 acres of land. The land, much of which is rich with timber, is located along the Florida panhandle.

The St. Joe Co. has owned the land for more than a dozen years and originally planned to profit from so-called master-planned communities in the region. That plan went sour when the real estate bubble bust, costing the company $330 million in 2011 alone.

The church already owns a large cattle ranch in the center of the state, according to the Associated Press, and much of this new land is not within current residential and commercial development zones. AgReserves Inc., an entity used by the church for taxpaying purposes, officially purchased the land.