Sea Island Co. sells parcel owned since 1945

By Rachel Tobin Ramos

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Sea Island Co. has sold four coastal tracts totaling more than 23,000 acres, though they do not include any existing resorts or residences.

The sale included a piece of land owned since 1945 by the Jones family, which controlled development of Sea Island since the 1920s.

The buyer is Dallas-based equity investors Stratford Land, which would not say how much it paid. The land was rezoned for residential and commercial projects.

The sale is more fallout from the financial failure of the Sea Island Co., which in February hired Goldman Sachs to sell revenue-producing properties including the Cloister hotel, golf courses and other properties.

Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia was hired last fall to sell the empty tracts of land, according to Matt Hawkins, with the land team.

The largest land parcel -- called Big Pasture at Cabin Bluff -- is 16,038 acres along 11 miles of the Satilla River. The property is zoned for a master-planned community or large private estates. Others include a 5,622-acre parcel in Brunswick zoned for more than 11,000 residences and 800 acres along I-95 and the Altamaha River, part of a former sugar plantation that had been part of the Jones family since 1945.

Sea Island “took care of these properties for many years,” said David Moore, Stratford’s director of investments for Georgia, Tennessee and Northern Florida. “These were jewels they had not developed.”

Moore said Stratford’s strategy is to hold land until it is ripe for development, at which point they sell to developers or other users.