A New York investment firm with vast land holdings across north Florida wants state lawmakers to greenlight giant developments
Companies linked to investment firm Ruane Cunniff have assembled more than 80,000 acres from Jacksonville to Panama City. The firm is now lobbying to make it easier to develop all that land.
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Since 2017, companies linked to a multibillion-dollar investment manager in New York have spent at least $230 million buying up more than 80,000 acres across north Florida — amassing giant tracts of largely rural land near Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Panama City.
That same investment firm now wants Florida lawmakers to make it much easier to develop that land.
Records obtained by Seeking Rents show that executives at Ruane Cunniff — a Manhattan-based firm that manages hedge funds, mutual funds and other investment vehicles — are behind an obscure entity pushing bills in the Florida Legislature this year that would enable giant landowners to have their properties rezoned for high-intensity development without a local public hearing or vote in the communities where the projects would occur.
The Ruane Cunniff-backed company has hired nearly 20 lobbyists in Tallahassee who have been quietly meeting with lawmakers in support of the legislation — which, if passed, could dramatically boost the value of the vast land holdings the firm has assembled in Florida over the past decade.
That’s not all. Separate records show that another corporate entity controlled by Ruane Cunniff executives recently began showering money on key figures in the Florida Capitol. That entity has made more than $150,000 in campaign contributions in the two months since House Bill 299 and Senate Bill 354 were filed in the Legislature — including $10,000 apiece for each of the bill sponsors.
Supporters have dubbed it the “blue ribbon projects” bill. They are selling it as way to promote smart growth by dangling the prospect of automatic development entitlements in front of landowners who agree to set parts of their property aside for conservation.
But the proposal has drawn opposition from environmental groups, local elected officials and home-rule advocates, and others who say the plan is rife with loopholes and that it would accelerate suburban sprawl around the state.
It is shaping up as one of the biggest policy battles of Florida’s 2026 legislative session, which begins Tuesday.
Representatives for Ruane Cunniff did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
From Jacksonville to Panama City
The land buys began in December 2017.
That’s when, property records show, a company called “First Coast Land and Timber LLC” paid $14.6 million to buy roughly 4,000 acres of timberland in St. Johns County from Rayonier Inc., the publicly traded lumber giant.
It was the first of what local records show has become more than $125 million worth of land purchases made in St. Johns County by First Coast Land and Timber and more than half a dozen other related limited liability companies. The entities bought much of the land from Rayonier and Robinson Improvement Co., a family-owned timber company that has more recently moved into real-estate development.
Today, property-tax records show that First Coast Land and Timber and those affiliates own more than 24,000 acres combined across St. Johns County. The holdings are concentrated southwest of St. Augustine, about an hour south of Jacksonville.
A similar pattern has played out in several other north Florida counties.
In October 2019, for instance, an entity called “Seaside-New Hope Inland Chain Lakes LLC” and four other similarly-named entities paid a combined $54 million to buy five giant parcels of land in Washington County from a charitable trust established in the name of James L. Knight, the former newspaper publisher who founded the now-defunct Knight Ridder chain.
A few smaller purchases followed, and the Seaside-New Hope LLCs today own more than 43,000 acres in the county, according to the Washington County Property Appraiser — all about an hour north of Panama City.
And in September 2020, yet another entity — called “Jax-Palatka Farms LLC” — paid a little more than $36 million to buy several large tracts in Clay County from the Reinhold Corp., a family-owned firm that began as a dairy cattle and timber operation and today is the largest private landowner in Clay County.
Jax-Palatka has since made several more purchases in the area. Tax records show it now owns more than 12,000 acres in Clay County in and around the Town of Penney Farms, about 45 minutes southwest of Jacksonville.
Altogether, property records show the various LLCs have spent more than $230 million to buy more than 80,000 acres across the three counties.
And they all trace back to Ruane Cunniff.
Links to New York
For instance, corporate filings for First Coast Land and Timber — one of the land-owning entities in St. Johns County — identify the manager of the LLC as Greg Alexander. That’s the same name as a senior manager at Ruane Cunniff, where a Greg Alexander is both a co-owner and a member of its management committee.
They appear to be the same person. In the First Coast Land and Timber filing, the mailing address provided for Greg Alexander matches Ruane Cunniff’s then-address in New York City.
The same filing also lists another Ruane Cunniff executive as principal officer for First Coast Land and Timber. And a separate mortgage document filed by the company is notarized by yet another executive at Ruane Cunniff.
Similarly, mortgage documents for Seaside-New Hope Inland Chain Lakes LLC and the other related land-owning entities in Washington County all list Gregory Alexander as their managing member — with the same Ruane Cunniff address in New York.
More Ruane Cunniff employee names, mailing addresses, and email addresses appear in other public documents filed by the Washington County companies, too, including corporate filings and easement agreements.
And the minutes from a 2023 meeting of the Town Council in Penney Farms identify a “Mr. Greg Alexander” as the owner of all the property purchased in Clay County by Jax-Palatka Farms LLC. Once again, additional Ruane Cunniff names and addresses appear in other Jax-Palatka records, as well.
The 80,000 acres in St. Johns, Washington and Clay counties may not be the extent of Ruane Cunniff’s holdings in Florida, either.
In February 2022, yet another limited liability company — “Weyco West Jax LLC” – paid $36.3 million to buy roughly 16,000 acres in Baker County from a land trust established by the Cummer family, an old lumber family in northeast Florida and the namesakes of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville. The land is just south of Interstate 10 about 45 minutes due west of Jacksonville.
The public records available for Weyco West Jax are more limited, and Greg Alexander’s name doesn’t appear in any of them.
But another name connected to Ruane Cunniff does: A person named Yoonjun Lee, who also goes by Jennifer Lee.
It’s not clear what Lee’s role is with Ruane Cunniff. But her name appears in many filings across all the Ruane Cunniff-connected LLCs, where she is often listed as the president.
Several corporate filings in Florida refer to a JenniferL@ruanecunniff.com email address. And last year, when Lee signed a sales deed on behalf of one of the Ruane Cunniff entities in Washington County, the signature was witnessed and notarized by three people in New York with names that match those of other Ruane Cunniff employees.
If the Baker County company is owned by Ruane Cunniff, as well, that would push the firm’s total acreage in Florida to more than 90,000.
A plan to lock in entitlements
Regardless of the precise size of its holdings, the New York investment firm hasn’t done a lot with all the land it has assembled in Florida since 2017.
One of its entities in St. Johns County sold a small parcel in 2023 to Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores for a new truck stop off I-95. Its Washington County entities recently sold about 4,000 acres to a golf-course developer planning a destination course dubbed “Old Shores.”
But its land could become a lot more appealing to real-estate developers under House Bill 299 and Senate Bill 354.
The legislation would apply only to landowners with at least 10,000 acres of property. Owners of such tracts who want to develop a mixed-use project on the land — or sell it off to another developer who would do it — could qualify for automatic entitlements if they agree to abide by certain conditions. The most notable: The landowner would have to set aside at least 60 percent of the land as “reserve area.”
A proposed development meeting the criteria would be classified as a “blue ribbon project.” And the local government in the area would then be forced to allow high-intensity development on the remainder of the property — regardless of the current zoning or future land use.
The auto-entitlements would include the right to build up to 12 homes or apartments per acre in residential portions of the development and to right to pave over as much as 85 percent of the surface area in commercial or industrial sections.
Supporters say the goal is to incentivize the biggest property owners in Florida to put more of their land into conservation. The ability to avoid a potentially contentious public hearing and high-stakes vote before the local county comission or municipal council — where residents might raise concerns about things like traffic congestion or water shortages — would make a property far more enticing for developers and drive up the value of the land.
But it would also strip local residents of any meaningful leverage to manage and guide the kind growth they want in their communities. And the requirement to put land into a “reserve area” could be exploited.
For instance, developers could simply set aside wetlands that couldn’t be developed anyway or draw up disconnected pockets of parkland that would provide little environmental value. Reserve areas could even include “utility sites,” which could encompass everything from electric transmission corridors to data centers.
Though the 2026 session doesn’t formally begin until next week, the legislation has already begun moving in Tallahassee. The House’s Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee held an initial hearing on the House version of the bill last month, where members voted to move it forward on a 12-2 vote.
Lobbying behind the scenes
Only two organizations testified in favor of the bill during the public hearing: The Florida Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying front group, and Americans for Prosperity, the activist group founded by the right-wing billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch.
But another organization was quietly working the bill behind the scenes.
Before that December committee hearing, lobbyists for a company called “Big Lands Transect Collaborative LLC” attended a pre-meeting held by the Democratic members of the committee and urged them to vote for the bill, according to a spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus.
Big Lands Transect Collaborative is also run by Ruane Cunniff executives, records show.
Specifically, corporate registration documents in Texas identify Gregory Alexander as a “governing person” for the entity.
It appears to be the same Gregory Alexander as the Ruane Cunniff executive who shows up in corporate documents for many of the firm’s land-owning entities in Florida. The signature on the Texas document matches the signatures on several other corporate documents in this state.
Texas corporate documents list one other name as a governing person for Big Lands Transect Collaborative: Jennifer Lee, the same name that shows up in nearly all of the corporate records for Ruane Cunniff companies in Florida.
Campaign contributions begin to come in
Big Lands Transect Collaborative has rapidly lobbied up in Tallahassee: Records show the firm has signed up 19 lobbyists since September to work the Florida Legislature.
But Ruane Cunniff’s companies aren’t just spending on lobbyists.
On Nov. 3 — the same day that state Rep. Lauren Melo (R-Naples) filed House Bill 299 in the state House — records show that Jax-Palatka Farms LLC made a $10,000 donation to a fundraising committee that Melo controls. Jax-Palatka LLC is the entity that owns land in Clay County.
Jax-Palatka Farms has continued making big gifts since. A week later, for instance, the company gave $100,000 to a fundraising committee for Wilton Simpson, the state’s Republican agriculture commissioner and a politician who could play a key role in determining what constitutes “reserve areas” under the blue ribbon projects legislation.
About a week after that, records show Jax-Palatka Farms contributed $25,000 to a committee run by House Speaker Daniel Perez (R-Miami). And in the weeks since, it has also given $10,000 each to committees for Sen. Stan McClain (R-Ocala), the bill sponsor in the Senate, and Rep. Wyman Duggan (R-Jacksonville).
Duggan is a land-use attorney who is one of the Legislature’s leading experts on development issues — and a partner at a Florida law firm that represents Ruane Cunniff.
Who runs Florida? Us or New York and Texas? This won't be "green housing". There is no such term as "smart development". None.Zero. Zippo.
BTW) Supply and demand have very little to do with real pricing. Mostly, it's a gaslighting excuse to price gouge.
In Florida, the Lennar Corp. is being sued as a class action winding its way through court because they couldn't sell houses for inflated prices. It's back to the old scam. Fraudulent mortgage origination loans and paperwork. And, NO it's not the homeowners fault. It never was ~
The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One by William Bill Black. There are plenty of empty houses in Florida. They are not affordable and empty or 3rd homes etc. Appraisal fraud people - did you not learn anything from 2008???? Seriously, people!!!!! eye roll...
Of course there’s no discussion about development paying for necessary infrastructure - roads, utilities, schools etc. Florida used to have reasonably effective Comprehensive Plans - developed locally and reviewed by Tallahassee - that required communities to plan for their own growth. No more. Tallahassee wants to run everything, but take no responsibility for consequences.