Developer buys land for Freedom Harbor

BUYER: Freedom Harbor LLC (principals: Rich and Roma Mozdzer, Debbie Reynolds, Michael Nemec, Jakub Pilecky, Zdenek Sefcik and Frank Sirchia), Gibsonton

SELLER: Southern Development Group Inc.

PROPERTY: 12398 Bull Frog Creek Road, Riverview

PRICE: $3.5 million

PREVIOUS PRICE: $400,000, August 2001

TITLE FIRM ON DEED: Chelsea Title of the Nature Coast Inc., Spring Hill

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: Freedom Harbor LLC, a partnership of Rich Mozdzer, Debbie Reynolds, Dr. Frank Sirchia, former Austrian Olympic Pair Skater Michael Nemec and Jakub Pilecky, purchased a 123-acre former borrow pit with a 70-acre Lake on Bullfrog Creek Road near Big Bend Road for $3.5 million.

The purchase price equated to $28,455 per acre.

The partners purchased the property to develop the multi-phase, mixed-use development Freedom Harbor. The development will feature a sports complex, 50,000-square-foot medical center, assisted/independent living facility, townhomes and a resort community.

The first phase of the project will be the three-section, 371,000-square-foot Freedom Harbor Sports Complex featuring 90-hotel rooms, a spa and wellness center, two restaurants, an arena, health club, two ice rinks, fifty hotel bungalows and more. The developers plan to team up with the Tampa Bay Sports Commission to bring events to Freedom Harbor. The sports complex will also feature two or three cable-tow systems for water sports stretching across the lake and operated by Pilecky's Voda Sport. The facility will also feature a 400-meter track built over the water.

The developers expect to break ground on the sportsplex in 2011.

“We still need to go through permitting,” Mozdzer says. “[Hillsborough] county has been extremely helpful working with us to get our entitlements.”

The second phase, the medical center, will feature an emergency-care walk-in center, doctors and dentists offices and a possible surgical center.

In the later stages, the developers are planning to build an assisted- and independent-care facility for 350 people, 200 townhomes and 200 resort/timeshare residential units.

The entire project is scheduled to open in 2012. The development team is still looking for tenants and is considering additional investors.

Freedom Harbor LLC mortgaged the property to Anthony Jacobs for $3.32 million.