Utah company becomes Florida's biggest private landowner

The St. Joe Company is selling most of its timberland and rural land holdings in North Florida.

The company announced Thursday that it has entered into a sales agreement with AgReserves, Inc., a Utah corporation, to sell nearly 383 thousand acres of its non-strategic timberland and rural land in Northwest Florida for $565 million dollars.

This proposed sale does not include any of St. Joe Company’s residential or commercial real estate properties.

The land to be sold includes the majority of the St. Joe Company's timberlands in Bay, Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty and Wakulla counties.

AgReserves will assume the agreements and contracts existing on the purchased timberlands and intends to maintain timber and agricultural uses of the lands.

The sale is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014.

Once the sale is complete, the St. Joe Company will own about 184,000 acres of land concentrated primarily in Northwest Florida, which includes lands used or intended to be used in its real estate development operations.

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