Florida’s new real estate mantra: I’ll have seconds
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, July 2, 2005
PENSACOLA, Fla. – Remember the term new urbanism? It promoted establishing suburban communities through planning the interaction of neighbors with housing, workplaces, shops, civic events, entertainment, schools and parks – all within easy walking distance of each other.
Next came urban rejuvenation, a movement that sparked more interest and energy in living, shopping and entertaining downtown. Pushed along by working couples, single professionals and aging executives, it is alive and well in many metropolitan areas, including Seattle and Portland, Ore.
In an attempt to lure East Coast and Midwest second-home buyers, the biggest landowner in Florida is out to create its own brand of new “ruralism” in the state’s northwest panhandle.
When you’re as big as Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co. – no ordinary Joe – you can create just about anything you want. The publicly traded organization owns more than 850,000 acres of real estate and 39 miles of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico, where it is planning at least 27 residential and resort communities comprised of river camps, ranches, hunting lodges, beachfront homes and gentleman farms in the next 12 years.
“The second home market is going to continue to be strong because it will be supported by baby boomers for some years to come,” said David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association if Realtors. “Many of these people are just entering their prime earning years while accruing large amounts of equity via home appreciation on their primary residences. In many cases, they are using this earning power to acquire and finance second homes.”
Lereah drew considerable attention earlier this year when he announced that 36 percent of all new homes purchased last year were second homes – 23 percent for investment and 13 percent for vacation. The driving forces were lower-than-expected interest rates, an alternative play to the conventional financial markets, appealing financing and an extremely limited supply of land and available inventory. In capsule, some people believed it was time to buy before everything was gone from their price range.
St. Joe’s definition of new ruralism, aimed at upper-end baby boomers, is helping people rediscover an intimate connection with the land that was once at the heart of America’s farms, ranches and rural communities. The company is creating and bringing to market three products – RiverCamps (planned settlements in rustic settings), WhiteFence Farms (5 to 20 acres) and Florida Ranches (50 to 150 acres) – to provide a way for people to reconnect with nature and the land.
RiverCamps begin at $174,500 for an interior building site to $1 million for a bay-front site. WhiteFence Farms’ initial pricing is expected to range from $20,000 to $75,000 per acre for a typical farm site. Florida Ranch parcels are expected to range from $4,500 to $10,000 per acre.
How in the world did one company acquire so many acres of developable land, much of it for a few dollars an acre? According to Jerry Ray, Joe’s senior vice president for corporate communications, A.I. DuPont, an infamous member of the DuPont family, “got carried away” with his quest for land for paper mill operations at Port St. Joe near the eastern Gulf edge of the panhandle.
The company has since sold more than 150,000 acres to environmental and conservation groups, plus smaller parcels to specialized retail developers, including a 1-million-square foot mall site near Panama City Beach.
St. Joe’s CEO, Peter Rummell, is pushing the imagination button to promote the various communities, and it’s easy to see why. He began his real estate career in 1971 with the Sea Pines Co., developers of Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Amelia Island, Fla. Beginning in 1977, he was general manager of Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., for the Arvida Corp. He joined the Rockefeller Center Management Corp. in New York as vice chairman in 1983, leaving in 1985 to become president of Disney Development Co.
He was responsible for Disney’s nontheme park land, directing hotel and related development near the company’s theme park locations in Orlando, Anaheim, Paris and Tokyo. During Rummell’s 12-year tenure, Disney produced over 20,000 hotel rooms. The new town of Celebration, Fla., was also a product of this development effort.
When Disney Development Co. and Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s design and creative division responsible for theme park development, merged to become Walt Disney Imagineering, Rummell became chairman of the combined group.
It will be interesting to see what he imagines with 39 miles of coastline.
Tom Kelly hosts “Real Estate Today” from 11 a.m.-noon Sundays on 770 KTTH-AM. Send comments to news@tomkelly.com
