Florida Power & Light bought nearly 350 acres of land in south Miami-Dade County near a solar panel facility owned by the energy company.
Juno Beach-based FPL bought the site between Krome Avenue and Southwest 187th Avenue, south of the Black Creek Canal NO C-1W, in an unincorporated area of the county, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. One of the parcels is at 18655 Southwest 120th Street, and the others don’t have an address.
The purchase closed in two deals. In the bigger sale, EuroAmerican Group and EuroAmerican Krome sold four parcels for $41.7 million. The selling entities are led by President Ivan Gonzalez Ruiz and Vice President Angel Torres, as well as Maria Haydee and Gonzalo Munoz Delgado de Robles, according to state corporate records.
Also, an entity tied to the Ardid family’s Miami-based Key International sold the northernmost parcel of the assemblage for $18.3 million.
The site is outside the Urban Development Boundary, an invisible line separating the developed portion of Miami-Dade from farmlands, wetlands and other open space where development is heavily restricted.
FPL, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, also owns a 465.6-acre solar panel facility at 18355 Southwest 136th Street, south of the land it purchased. Records show it paid $18 million for the site in 2016.
It’s unclear if the newly purchased properties also will be used to expand FPL’s solar power. The company didn’t return a request for comment.
NextEra, also based in Juno Beach, is working to wean off natural gas and instead rely on renewable energy sources, with the goal of eliminating fossil fuels by 2045, according to an April article in the South Florida Business Journal.
Led by CEO Armando Pimentel Jr., FPL has been amassing large tracts of land in South Florida for solar farms in recent years.
In 2020, it dropped $17.9 million for 969 acres on the former site of the historic Moss Ranch, west of the L-8 Canal and north of Southern Boulevard, in west Palm Beach County. That came after FPL paid $10 million for a 400-acre site in west Palm Beach County, also planned for a solar farm.
As of 2022, FPL expected that it would have installed 30 million solar panels in Florida by the end of next year.
