The developer of the planned 10,000-home Avalon Park Daytona community north of Latitude Margaritaville on Tuesday completed his $40.9 million purchase of more than 3,000 acres. Developer Beat Kahli says he expects to break ground in 2021.
DAYTONA BEACH — Developer Beat Kahli took a big step this week to bringing his vision of creating a new town here closer to reality.
The developer on Tuesday completed a $40.9 million purchase of just over 3,000 acres along the south side of State Road 40/West Granada Boulevard.
“We’re going full speed ahead,” said Kahli, the chairman and CEO of Orlando-based Avalon Park Group and SitEX Properties USA.
Kahli said he plans to break ground on the community called Avalon Park Daytona in 2021.
On full build-out the community is expected to bring 10,000 homes and a 400-acre downtown to the fast-growing area west of Interstate 95. It will be directly north of the Jimmy Buffett-themed Latitude Margaritaville 55-and-older community and ICI Homes’ 1,200-home Mosaic “full life” community off of LPGA Boulevard.
The land sale is the biggest ever in terms of dollar amount in the Daytona Beach area to a single developer, according to John Albright, the CEO of CTO Realty Growth Inc.
CTO was the seller of the 3,015 acres to Kahli’s SitEX Properties USA. Albright’s company changed its name earlier this year from Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co.
CTO’s previous biggest land sale to a single developer was its $27.2 million sale in 2017 of 1,581 acres to Minto Communities, developer of the 3,400-home Latitude Margaritaville.
″(Kahli’s purchase) is an incredible confirmation that Daytona is a very attractive location for developers,” said Albright.
“The success of Latitude Margaritaville (one of the nation’s fastest-growing 55-and-older communities in 2018 and 2019) showed that this area is highly desired,” he added.
Volusia County Property Appraiser Larry Bartlett said the land purchase by Kahli is the third largest in county history.
The biggest was a $81.2 million land sale in 2006 of roughly 5,900 acres in New Smyrna Beach to an entity known as Hammock Creek Green LLC. That same tract of land was sold in 2013 for $61.5 million and is now part of the 47,000-acre Farmton development site in southeast Volusia County that is owned by Chicago, Illinois-area developer Miami Corp.
A 1,600-acre portion of the land that Kahli purchased Tuesday was originally under contract to be sold to Minto as future expansion space for Latitude Margaritaville.
Kahli’s purchase combines both that parcel with 1,000 acres just east of Tiger Bay State Forest that were originally under contract to be sold to ICI Homes Chairman and CEO Mori Hosseini.
Both sites were entitled to accommodate residential communities that would have had thousands of homes and separate neighborhood retail centers.
Kahli’s purchase also included two additional land parcels. One is a 150-acre swath of land directly west of where Hand Avenue currently ends on the other side of I-95. The other is a 286-acre parcel that mainly consists of wetlands on the east side of Tiger Bay State Forest.