Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet could be poised to make their largest outright purchase of land for preservation.
The $16.1 million purchase of 11,027 acres southeast of Tallahassee, if approved, would also be the largest acquisition of its kind for the state in more than a decade.
Scott and the Cabinet had been expected to take up the proposal during a meeting Tuesday, but the meeting was canceled Monday as officials dealt with the threat of Hurricane Matthew.
The next scheduled Cabinet meeting is Oct. 25.
The land, known as Horn Spring Woods, contains 10 natural springs, has nearly 10 miles of meandering frontage along the St. Marks River and would help create an environmental corridor linking the St. Marks River Preserve State Park to the north, the Fanlew Preserve and Aucilla Wildlife Management Area to the east and the Natural Bridge Battlefield Historic State Park to the south.
Scott and Cabinet members — Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam — have not publicly indicated how they will vote on the proposal.
Money for the deal with Salt Lake City-based Natural Bridge Timberland, LLC would come through the Florida Forever conservation program.
As a number of Republicans in charge of the House and Senate have questioned the need for the state to acquire more land, Florida Forever doesn’t have nearly the funding it had before the recession, when the program received up to $300 million a year. Scott and the three current members of the Cabinet were all first elected in 2010.
Instead of outright acquisitions, Scott and the Cabinet during the past couple of years have favored purchasing what are known as “conservation easements,” which allow sellers to continue using land for ranching and other agricultural purposes while protecting it from development.
The deal would be the largest “fee simple” acquisition since the state spent $308 million for 67,618 acres of Babcock Ranch property in Southwest Florida in a deal completed in 2006.
The sales price on Horn Spring Woods is listed at 75 percent of the land’s appraised value.
Natural Bridge Timberland bought the land in March 2014 for $13.67 million as part of a broader 300,000-acre deal.
George Willson, a board member with the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy in Tallahassee, said the land has “beautiful sand hills, some of the largest cypress you’ll see anywhere off a major river and a great springs assortment.”
“This is a really special place for Northwest Florida,” he said.