The last time Florida Trend completed an inventory of the state’s top 10 landowners, Plum Creek Timber topped the list, with 590,000 acres. That was in 2011 — five years before the Seattle-based real estate investment trust merged with Weyerhaeuser to become the largest timberland owner in the nation.
Today, Weyerhaeuser owns less than half as much Florida acreage, but it ranks among the largest landowners in the state, with holdings equal in size to about 425 square miles — and it’s doing more than just growing trees. In Lake City, near the Florida-Georgia border, it’s developing an industrial park, and a company spokesman acknowledged plans to develop other parcels it owns.
Weyerhaeuser is one of three newcomers to our updated list. The others are Four Rivers Land & Timber Co. — which purchased half a million acres spanning five counties in 2016 — and energy giant FPL, which has acquired more than 250,000 acres for solar plants and other facilities.
Farmland Reserve, the investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tops the list with 626,600 Florida acres. While it currently raises beef cattle on some of that acreage, it expects by 2080 to see a half million people living on its 295,000 acres in Orange, Osceola and Brevard counties. In a subset of that subset, a 27,447-acre development called Sunbridge, it anticipates 5,500 hotel rooms, 36,690 residences and 19.8 million square feet of offices, industrial, retail and institutional or civic space. Some 13,370 acres of the project will be in conservation or dedicated open space.
Farmland Reserve isn’t the only behemoth landowner transforming fields into foundations. In the Panhandle, St. Joe Co. — which has fallen seven notches to No. 9 on our list — has entitlements for 170,000 homes and 22 million square feet of non-residential development for what is seen as the largest planned community in Florida.
In Florida, “every tract of land is at some point of transition,” says Dean Saunders, founder and managing director of SVN Saunders Ralston Dantzler Real Estate and a key source of data for this report. “There’s just so much demand. The growth pushes demand for all categories of land throughout the state.”
Then & Now
In 2011, Florida’s top 10 landowners collectively owned more than 3.5 million acres. Today, they own just under 3.3 million — which equates to about 9.6% of the state’s acreage.
2011
1. Plum Creek Timber
2. St. Joe Co.
3. Foley Timber
4. Rayonier
5. Lykes Bros.
6. Deseret Ranches of Florida (Farmland Reserve)
7. Mosaic
8. Bascom Southern
9. Florida Crystals
10. U.S. Sugar
2024
1. Farmland Reserve (Deseret Ranches of Florida)
2. Four Rivers Land & Timber Co.
3. Rayonier
4. Mosaic
5. Lykes Bros.
6. Weyerhaeuser
7. FPL
8. U.S. Sugar
9. St. Joe Co.
10. Florida Crystals
METHODOLOGY
To find the state’s largest landowners, Florida Trend filed data requests with all 67 county property appraisers; consulted real estate firm SVN Saunders Ralston Dantzler, which tracks major land transactions; reviewed the securities filings of publicly traded landowners; and asked the owners themselves.