By Matt Dixon
Naples Daily News
TALLAHASSEE — The state Tuesday approved the sale of nearly $30 million in state-owned property, including four Florida prisons shuttered due to budget cuts, in order to pump money into a program designed to purchase conservation lands.
The sales approved unanimously by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet included $3.7 million for 1,110 acres that is home to the unused Hendry Correctional Institute near Immokalee.
Despite closing the prison’s doors in 2012, the Florida Department of Corrections still pays annually to maintain the property and its now empty structures.
That property is being purchased by Blue Spoon LLC, a Naples company that plans to turn the property into “a tactical training facility” that will create 200 jobs in Hendry County over the next three years, according to documents presented to the Cabinet.
Brian Jones, the company’s president, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Tuesday about plans for the site.
There had been some interest expressed in Southwest Florida about using portions of the property for projects such as an ATV park or a substance abuse rehabilitation center.
Scott and the Cabinet, which includes Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, CFO Jeff Atwater and Attorney General Pam Bondi, approved a total of seven land sales worth $27 million. That money will be used by Florida Forever, a state-funded conservation and recreation land-buying program.
In order to be sold, each property first must be deemed non-conservation land and no longer needed. The sales were supported by environmental groups.
“We are very excited about seeing that become a reality,” said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon of Florida.
The biggest Cabinet-approved land deal was a $13.5 million sale of the former Broward County Correctional Institute in Palm Beach County to the city of Pembroke Pines.
Scott said when the state no longer needs a piece of property, he supports taking it off the books.
“Let’s put it back in the hands of the private sector so they will do something productive with it,” Scott said.
Other sales approved by Scott and the Cabinet include:
---A half-acre of land for $4.5 million to the city of Miami.
---A total of $4.7 million for sales of the land that formerly housed state-run correctional centers in Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties.
---$33,000 for less than an acre in Monroe County.
The four prisons being sold by the state were closed in 2012 as part of a Department of Corrections consolidation plan.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which is overseeing the sales, contracted with CBRE, a Los Angeles-based real estate firm, to help it sell each of the properties.