Florida completes $83M purchase of 4 waterfront acres in Destin

It’s a done deal: Florida’s environmental agency on Thursday officially closed on the purchase of a 4-acre waterfront property in Destin, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection confirmed Friday. The final purchase price? $83,326,520. While buying more land for conservation typically draws broad bipartisan support, the decision to buy the Panhandle property for more than $20 million per acre has been scrutinized by some of Florida’s top leaders, including the Republican chief financial officer appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The now-former landowners, Pointe Mezzanine LLC and Pointe Resort LLC, are both registered in state corporate filings to Robert Guidry, a Louisiana business owner. Records show Guidry, who was implicated in a bribery scandal involving former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards in the early 1990s, and companies registered to him have donated more than $400,000 to state political committees, including one supporting DeSantis.Pointe Mezzanine and Pointe Resort bought the Destin land in 2016 and 2017 for nearly $8 million, according to state documents. The have now sold it to the state for more than 10 times the original purchase price. State environment officials have defended the purchase, saying it will help expand public access to an adjacent city park and offer more recreational opportunities in a highly urbanized area where there’s a need for more conserved land. But longtime conservation experts who have spoken with the Tampa Bay Times, and who combined served under the administrations of five Florida governors, said the purchase raised unsettling questions about which landowners state leaders are prioritizing for conservation buys. The amount of money spent on the property could have been used to add hundreds of acres of land for vital panther habitat in the Florida Wildlife Corridor , they added.“This is a sad day for honest government and arm’s-length land acquisition,” said Eric Draper, who served as the director of Florida’s state parks system under DeSantis until he retired in 2021. “There is no way to justify shifting public money intended for wildlife habitat to enrich a political donor. No way to justify paying 10 times the value of the land.”Conservation experts also questioned how the proposal arose: Republican Sen. Jay Trumbull added language to the budget on the final day of negotiations to make buying the Destin property the top priority; the proposal originated from a lobbyist representing Guidry’s company , who then hand-delivered the language to Trumbull’s aide; the proposal said the state could rely on appraisals commissioned by the landowner; and to buy the land, the state is using funds that had been specifically set aside to buy properties meant to increase the wildlife corridor, according to the language in the budget. The 4-acre parcel in Destin is not in that corridor. The agency did not immediately provide copies of the closing documents Friday. DeSantis last week defended the purchase and said he “honored” the priority of the Legislature by voting to buy the land alongside the Cabinet on Sept. 30. “Had they not directed it, would it have happened? Probably not‚" DeSantis said. The governor, experts have noted, could have used his veto authority to remove the purchase from the budget, but he didn’t.“This shows that the state’s priority is not conserving land for the benefit of average Floridians, just for those who have money and direct access to the Florida governor and Cabinet members,” said Susannah Randolph, chapter director for Sierra Club Florida. Randolph noted the irony that the purchase comes on the heels of a new state report, released last week, showing a $759 million backlog of repairs needed across Florida’s state park system. The report was required by a new law passed in response to the DeSantis administration’s now-withdrawn plans last year to build golf courses and hotels in parks. “Instead of prioritizing our parks, we’re spending money on this sweetheart deal for a developer,” Randolph said. Times staff writer Emily L. Mahoney contributed to this report. The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida‘s most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here .

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