AC Maintenance in Babcock Ranch, FL

Occupying land in both Charlotte and Lee counties near Fort Myers, Babcock Ranch was named after Edward Vose Babcock, a lumber baron and mayor of Pittsburgh (1918-1922), who purchased the land in 1914. The land’s primary use was logging and agriculture, and those uses continue to generate funds for maintenance and operation of the Babcock Ranch Preserve. The Babcock Ranch Preserve Act enacted by the Florida legislature in 2006 made it the first Florida preserve responsible for generating its own funding under a public private management partnership that includes the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Forest Service.

In the late 1990s, the Babcock family sought to sell the ranch to the state of Florida. The property was considered a priority for purchase by conservation leaders who saw it as the final section needed to establish an environmental corridor stretching from Lake Okeechobee in the center of Florida all of the way to the Charlotte Harbor Estuary on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The state offered US$455 million for 91,000 acres (37,000 ha) in 2005, but negotiations broke down over the structure of the transaction and tax issues. A sale of the real estate would have triggered significant tax liabilities that could be avoided if ownership was transferred through sale of all corporate stock. The state was barred from meeting the family’s terms by a provision in the state constitution prohibiting use of land acquisition funds for purchase of a private company’s stock.