'Keep some of Florida like it is': Lakeland broker pursues passion with conservation deals
In 1984, Dean Saunders stood along State Road 50 in his native Clermont, gazing at citrus trees ravaged by a winter freeze.
He told his wife, Gina Cain Saunders, “This’ll all be houses one day, and I'm going to hate it. I wonder if there's a way we could pay landowners not to develop their land.”
About a decade later, as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, Saunders authored legislation creating the Green Swamp Land Authority, the first state entity empowered to purchase development rights from landowners. That pilot program, devoted to environmentally crucial land that includes northern Polk County, established the template for programs that use state funding to buy what are now called conservation easements.
In recent months, Saunders — a commercial real-estate broker based in Lakeland — has helped close transactions with the state to protect nearly 17,000 acres of privately owned land. The deals often involve large tracts of agricultural land, allowing the owners to continue their activities as the state pays to restrict future development on the properties.
Among the recent transactions, Saunders brokered the state’s purchase of a conservation easement for Midway Farms, a 3,634-acre cattle ranch near Frostproof. The owners agreed to an offer of $10.7 million through Florida’s Rural and Family Lands Protection program.
Saunders said he pursues conservation deals separately from his role as managing director and senior adviser with SVN/Saunders Ralston Dantzler Real Estate in Lakeland.
“I'm an eighth-generation Floridian, which is probably one of those things why I'm so passionate about it,” he said. “I’d like to keep some of Florida like it is, like I knew it growing up.”
From idea to reality
Saunders gained election to the Florida House in 1992 as a conservative Democrat, about a decade after settling in Lakeland. In 1985, the Legislature had adopted the Growth Management Act, which required, among other provisions, that counties devise comprehensive plans that included future land maps.
The Legislature established the Department of Community Affairs to oversee growth management in the state. Saunders recalls that in the 1990s, Polk County leaders were “at war” with the DCA over the county’s comprehensive plan. Meanwhile, landowners chafed at what he called the “downzoning” of properties, revising their designated land use, which owners saw as reducing their value.
“It was primarily in the Green Swamp where they were really having these wailing and gnashing of teeth with DCA,” Saunders said. “And so, then I came along with the development rights plan, totally separate of Polk County's disagreement with DCA on the comp plan. But it was the solution to, ‘Well, if we can get this and then we can offer out to landowners an opportunity to sell their development rights, maybe that'll just be a way to smooth this whole thing out.’”
The Green Swamp Land Authority coordinated with the Southwest Florida Water Management District to acquire land within its boundaries. Saunders said the experiment proved that the concept of purchasing development rights could work.
Saunders credited former Florida Sen. Paula Dockery of Lakeland with devising the legislation that created the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program in 2001, when she was in the state House.
Saunders has also brokered transactions for outright purchase of conservation land through the Florida Forever program. The state first established a land-buying program in the 1970s, and the program gained strength with Preservation 2000, a program created in 1989 with $3 billion dedicated to conservation purchases.
The concept continued with Florida Forever, enacted in 2001 through legislation sponsored by Dockery and extended in 2008. State funding has fluctuated over the years, with the Legislature often directing money for other purposes. But Saunders praised the Florida Legislature for allotting $126 million for the program in the current budget, the largest amount in 15 years.
The Legislature appropriated $300 million for the Rural and Family Lands Protection program in the past two sessions.
The P-2000 and Florida Forever programs have conserved more than 2.6 million acres, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Both Florida Forever and the Rural and Family Lands Protection programs involve property with willing sellers, and projects are reviewed by state agencies in a formal process that requires approval by the governor and state Cabinet.
Midway Farms, the subject of Saunders’ largest recent project with the state, was previously owned by citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin III and known as G-3 Ranch. Saunders tried to broker a deal for a conservation easement while Griffin was still alive but did not reach an agreement with the state, he said.
Following Griffin’s death in 2020, his family sold the property to Charlie Grimes, a prominent strawberry grower from Plant City, and his business partner, Joel Connell, in a deal brokered by Saunders.
The parcel about six miles southwest of Frostproof had been placed on the state’s list of eligible properties for the Rural and Family Lands Protection program, and the new owners told Saunders they wanted to pursue an easement. He negotiated with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to reach an agreement, with the state paying $10.7 million for the easement.
The owners will continue to run Midway Farms as a commercial cow-calf operation, Connell said, with a permanent herd used to produce calves for sale.
“It means a lot to us in the fact that it's secured, that future generations can farm and ranch and enjoy it without worry about the encroachment from urban sprawl,” Connell said. “As far as Dean goes, he walked us through the process from start to finish. He made the process go smoothly and kept us up to date throughout the whole process. He has an intimate knowledge of the program. We couldn't be happier with the way it turned out.”
The property contains more than 1,000 acres of improved pasture, with the remaining uplands mostly pine flatwoods and a few small patches of scrub, according to a description from the Department of Agriculture. It provides habitat for such threatened species as the eastern indigo snake and gopher tortoise.
The parcel lies within the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a ribbon of undeveloped lands that provide crucial habitat for native species, such as Florida black bears and Florida panthers, that require expansive ranges. The state described the potential for development on the property as high, noting that it is bordered on the east and west by residential sites.
In addition to the 3,634-acre parcel that was Griffin’s personal ranch, Grimes and Connell bought an adjacent 900-acre tract that had been owned by Griffin’s company. The owners hope to secure a conservation easement for that property as well, Saunders said.
“I try to match my clients up with the programs that have the money and where it's the most applicable,” Saunders said. “I look at my conservation work just like my work in my real estate practice: I have a seller who has needs, a buyer who has needs, and my job is really to understand those and see if I can’t pair them up.”
Working throughout Florida
Having secured the easement for the Midway Farms property, Saunders continues to pursue protection for other properties. Last week, he gave a presentation to support an application for Raley Grove, a tract of 417 acres near Dundee, for a Polk County committee evaluating conservation lands for acquisition.
He is also seeking protection through the state’s Rural and Family Lands Protection program for another 517 acres owned by Raley Grove in Hardee County.
Saunders said he has brokered deals for protection of about 250,000 acres in Florida, either through outright acquisitions or conservation easements. He has arranged transactions not only through state programs but also with federal agencies and Polk County, through its Environmental Lands Program. As an example of the latter, he mentioned Gator Creek Reserve, a 2,700-acre tract north of Lakeland.
Outside of Polk County, Saunders has arranged major conservation agreements. He cited a conservation easement for Blue Head Ranch, covering about 43,000 acres in Highlands County, much of it within the watershed of Fisheating Creek, the only undammed tributary of Lake Okeechobee.
Saunders helped secure the public-private acquisition of a 17,000-acre property in Florida’s Big Bend area variously known as the Dickerson Bay property and the Bluffs of St. Teresa. The Department of Environmental Protection and The Nature Conservancy closed that purchase in 2020 for a combined $5.25 million.
The state had been pursuing the property for more than 20 years, and Saunders arranged the sale by a subsidiary of AgReserves Inc., the taxpaying entity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“The Bluffs is an incredibly important acquisition for the state of Florida, and is the largest fee acquisition approved by the board of trustees in over a decade,” DEP Secretary Noah Valenstein said at the time in a news release.
Just this month, Saunders completed a deal for easements on property in Jefferson County, in Florida’s Panhandle, owned by a prominent family whose name he did not disclose.
Saunders recalled that a longtime friend of his father’s questioned him a couple of years ago after he arranged the commercial sale of a large ranch in Central Florida. Saunders replied that if landowners choose to sell to a developer, he is willing to help them.
“And I said, ‘John, if you get people to quit moving to Florida, I'll quit selling them real estate,’” he said.
Saunders then informed the man that he had brokered sales of about 9,000 acres for development in the previous year while arranging for conservation of 29,000 acres.
“So I think, on the whole, I did over three times as much conservation work as I did development work,” he said. “Now, that's not the firm, that's me personally, my personal brokerage business. I'm pretty passionate about it.”
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland broker adds to legacy of land conservation in Florida
