Collier County pays $20.77 million for 2,500 acres near Immokalee

Naples/Fort Myers/Charlotte

New homes, new meals: Babcock Ranch, the solar-powered master-planned community, has topped the 4,000 mark in home sales. The developer, Kitson & Partners, announced the milestone last week saying the 4,000th home sold the second week in May. By May 26, that number had jumped 4,034. Babcock Ranch is an 18,000-acre community that straddles Charlotte and Lee counties. When it is fully built out it will have about 19,500 residences as well as schools, shopping centers, restaurants and other amenities. Developers see it as eventually operating as a standalone, self-sustaining city. Coming to one of those shopping centers is the Washington, D.C. hamburger chain Five Guys. It will move into The Shoppes at Yellow Pine, a 120,000-square-foot shopping center under construction in Babcock Ranch. When it opens next year, tenants will include Ace Hardware, Carvel Ice Cream, Five Below and Marshalls.

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