Who backed out of St. Joe’s $130-million deal?
Wake up and good morning. I know, we’ve all got the buzz of the presidential election on our fuzzy minds this morning. Congratulations on a hard-fought, historical event. We’ll be sorting this one out for months if not years.
But for now, I want to go instead to the 607,000-acre behemoth known as St. Joe Co., Florida’s biggest private landowner (though it will lose that title as it continues to sell acreage). It reported earnings, a loss in fact, on Tuesday. Here’s a basic story and here are greater details. You may remember, that St. Joe assembled the bulk of its rural land holdings in the 1920s and 1930s for pennies on the acre. The company has no debt and no mortgage on these holdings. The company’s cost to keep it is minimal. Lucky St. Joe.
What’s more compelling is St. Joe’s strategy to keep reshaping the Florida Panhandle — dare we still call it the Redneck Riviera? — or, as St. Joe’s marketing hammer dubs it, Florida’s Great Northwest.