Land Report 100er No. 87 Takes the Chair at The Nature Conservancy

Roger Milliken Jr., president and CEO of Maine’s Baskahegan Co., was named chairman of the board of The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s largest conservation organizations. The announcement was made earlier this month. Milliken, whose family’s company owns more than 100,000 acres of Maine timberland through Baskahegan and ranks No. 87 on the 2008 Land Report 100, has been a member of The Nature Conservancy board since 2000 and a member of the Maine chapter’s board of trustees for more than 10 years. He succeeds John Morgridge, former CEO of Cisco Systems. Read more

Kelo Rears Its Greedy Head in Houston

For landowners, their is no more controversial case than the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London permitting the use of eminent domain to transfer private property from one owner to another under the guise of furthering economic development. In response to this 2005 decision, dozens of state legislatures passed bills curbing the effects of Kelo, including Texas, which made it illegal for a municipality to condemn property solely for private economic development. Yet that is exactly what Mayor Bill White and the City of Houston have seemingly done. Read more

Plum Creek Completes First Phase of $150 Million Montana Timber Sale

The nation’s large private landowner — Plum Creek Timber (NYSE:PCL) — took the initial step towards completing the sale of an estimated 130,000 acres of Montana forestlands last week. In the first step of a three phase plan, the company received $150 million in cash from The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land ($1,153 per acre). The complete announcement from Plum Creek’s corporate website follows: Read more

Commercial Developers Ask the Treasury Department for $200 Billion Bailout

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that commercial developers who own thousands of shopping centers, office complexes, hotels, and other commercial buildings have been pressing the Treasury Department to include their industry in a $200 billion loan program being created to salvage the market for car loans, student loans, and credit-card debt. Some are even suggesting setting up a separate program to increase lending to commercial real estate only.

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Iowa Farmland Sets Record Highs for Sixth Straight Year

Iowa State reports that the value of an average acre of farmland has increased for the ninth year in a row to an all-time high. According to the survey’s director, ISU Extension farm economist Mike Duffy, land values have doubled since 2003, climbing from $2,275 to $4,468 in just five years. Read more

Obama to Nominate Salazar for Interior

Landowners in the West will have one of their own heading up the Interior Department in the new Obama Administration. According to published reports, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) will be named the 50th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior later this week by President-elect Barack Obama. Read more

Brazil to Issue Deeds to Thousands of Landowners in the Amazon Basin

Brazilians have long feared that foreigners were exploiting great expanses of the Amazon River Basin, a story we covered earlier this year when the Brazilian government began to investigate unlawful land sales to overseas interests. Now the country has established a program to ascertain ownership of farms of all sizes and streamline the process by which landowners can get deeds to their property. The root cause of this initiative? Less than 4 percent of privately owned land in the Amazon is actually deeded. Read more

More Details Emerge on the Crested Butte Mountain Resort Sale

Last Friday’s sale of Colorado’s Crested Butte Ski Resort, part of a three-ski-area package acquired by CNL Lifestyle Properties from Triple Peaks LLC for $132 million, marks the second change in ownership for the Gunnison County landmark in less than five years. In 2002, Triple Peaks, which is owned by Tim and Diane Mueller, was set to buy Steamboat Springs Ski Area from American Skiing Co. (ASC) for $91.4 million, but ASC backed out. The Muellers perservered, however, and two years later they acquired Crested Butte from the Callaway and Walton families in March 2004. Here’s the official lowdown on last week’s sale, which was broadcast via email earlier today:

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Resilient Montanans Rally Around Timber

Worthwhile read in the New York Times today by Kirk Johnson for the National Desk. The focus of the article is less about timber or timberland as an investment and more about the Montana logging communities whose lifeblood has been altered by forces far from home, including the mortgage meltodown, climate change, and the drop in demand for … wood chips. Read more

U.S. Sugar Approves Sale of 180,000 Acres in the Everglades for $1.34 Billion

Today U.S. Sugar announced that its board of directors had approved the sale/leaseback of 180,000 acres to the South Florida Water Management District for $1.34 billion ($7,444 per acre). The transaction ranks as one of the largest of 2008 and is the culmination of intense negotiations between the privately held company and the water district that will create a natural flow of water between Lake Okeechobee and the southern Everglades. The complete press release from U.S. Sugar follows.. Read more

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