Florida Rock Industries bought a massive quarry outside of Miami-Dade County’s urban development boundary for $98.1 million.
An affiliate of Jacksonville-based Florida Rock acquired a 590-acre mining site in an unincorporated area near Doral, records and Vizzda show.
The deal breaks down to $166,271 per acre.
The seller, an affiliate of Lutz, Florida-based Preferred Materials, paid $17.2 million for the vacant land in 2004, records show.
Since it is outside the boundary, or UDB, the property doesn’t have any infrastructure and cannot be developed. The UDB is a greenbelt separating the developed portion of the county from wetlands and farmland. The invisible line’s purpose is to prohibit construction sprawl into the Everglades and Biscayne National Park
But the 590-acre site is zoned for mining limestone, a natural resource that is used to make cement mix used in commercial construction projects.
Florida Rock is among a handful of companies that conduct rock mining operations outside of Miami-Dade’s urban development boundary. The county recently issued a mining permit for the 590-acre site that expires in 2030, records show.
Florida Rock and its competitors provide cement mix to hundreds of real estate development projects across the state and elsewhere in the U.S.
In 2007, Birmingham, Alabama-based Vulcan Materials, led by CEO Thomas Hill, acquired Florida Rock.
The UDB is often a point of conflict pitting developers against conservationists. Last month, an industrial megaproject outside the UDB approved by Miami-Dade County commissioners suffered a major setback.
A Leon County judge ruled the county missed a deadline to approve a Comprehensive Development Master Plan amendment that allowed the megaproject to move forward. The developers are Coral Gables-based Coral Rock and Miami-based Aligned Real Estate
After five tries, the county commission had authorized the amendment on Nov. 1, 2022, four days after a legally mandated deadline.
Meanwhile, another development group led by Mario Ferro Jr. and Risset Ferro are seeking county approval to create the Portofino Special District in a rural unincorporated area of southwest Miami-Dade that would allow a development with 1,677 single-family homes, townhouses and apartments; 100,000 square feet of offices and more than 97,000 square feet of retail and restaurants.