The Mormon church is set to become the largest private landowner in Florida after making a deal to buy approximately 400,000 acres in the Panhandle region.
The church "intends to maintain timber and agricultural uses of the lands," according to a statement released by a Florida real estate firm, St. Joe Company, according to Reuters.
The signed agreement with the church's company, AgReserves Inc., is for $565 million and is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, according to the statement.
The deal is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2014, according to Reuters.
The Mormon church was already one of Florida's largest landowners before the deal however.
For over 60 years, the church has owned Deseret Ranches, which is a 290,000 cattle and citrus operation spanning at least three different Central Florida counties, according to Reuters. The ranches are approximately 50 miles southeast of downtown Orlando.
Deseret says it operates the largest cow-calf ranch in the U.S. with 44,000 head of cattle, according to Northern Ag Network.
The Deseret website says it is owned by Farmland Reserves, a non-profit company. Another firm, Deseret Cattle and Citrus, is a division of AgReserves, according to Reuters.
The church's Florida holdings is now up to 672,834 acres, or almost 2 percent of the state's land mass. The total does not include smaller isolated church parcels in Orlando and South Florida.
Though almost all of the church's holdings remain in rural and agricultural uses, the church has plans for future development of a 19,000-acre section of the Deseret Ranches approximately 10 miles from Orlando International Airport.
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