Baptist Health appears to be planning a medical development in the Skinner family’s Seven Pines development at southeast Butler Boulevard and Interstate 295.
Pavilion Health Services Inc., which buys and holds properties for Baptist Health facilities, paid $10 million Oct. 26 for property within the development.
It bought the land from Sawmill Timber LLC. Sawmill member Edward Skinner Jones said Pavilion bought 10 acres.
“The first sale in Seven Pines Village Center will be a Baptist Health center,” Jones said.
Baptist Health did not have details.
“We can confirm the purchase of the property,” it said in a statement.
The deed covenants and restrictions said the use of the purchased property is restricted to the development and operation of medical facilities and commercial offices of no more than 120,000 square feet of space.
The medical facilities included but were not limited to “medical offices, ambulatory surgery center, supplemental, multispecialty clinic or imaging center.”
The agreement for sale and purchase was dated March 22, 2021.
The Village Center property is designed for food, commercial, entertainment, hotels and other uses. Atlanta developer Jeff Fuqua had 67 acres there under contract to develop a food hall, grocery store, movie theater, apartments, hotels and event space, but the contract expired in 2020.
The Skinners are selling land within the 1,063-acre Seven Pines property.
Seven Pines will comprise 1,600 single-family homes, apartments and more than 1 million square feet of commercial and retail space. It will include a 34-acre park with a lake.
Homebuilders ICI Homes and David Weekley Homes will develop the residential portion of the project.
The Skinner family, through Sawmill Timber LLC, sold about 197 acres for $11.8 million Dec. 23 to a joint venture of the builders.
The builders have the rights for about 560 acres, which they will buy in three phases.
In another project, Spectrum Companies plans 280 apartments and 20 town homes on 10 acres.
Seven Pines, previously referred to as the Southeast Quadrant, is the last large undeveloped Duval County site that remains of the Skinner family’s original 50,000 acres from the late 1800s.
The rest has been sold and developed, including as St. Johns Town Center and the University of North Florida.
Seven Pines stands for the seven Skinner brothers who looked after the family’s large landholdings,
The property has been owned by the Skinners for more than a century for agricultural uses such as silviculture, cattle grazing and hunting.
A.C. “Chip” Skinner III spoke for the family at a January ground-breaking marking the start of the master-planned residential community, “Seven Pines, A Legacy of Gathering.”
Skinner, president of Skinner Bros. Realty, said the family will continue to manage the property not sold to the homebuilders for timber, “just like we’ve always done.”
The family also will continue holding Thanksgiving on the property, bringing together 175 to 200 members descending from the seven brothers.
“We’ll still hunt on it and do the things that we’ve always done but,” he said, “things will change.