Bluegreen Pays Premium for Bethel Beach Club

BOCA RATON, FL-Locally based Bluegreen Corp. paid top dollar to Bethel Beach Club Partners Ltd. of Fort Lauderdale for Bethel Beach Club Resort & Spa, a distressed 65-unit, 62,044-sf resort property at 8801 Collins Ave., Surfside, just north of Miami Beach. The $7.1 million price equates to $109,230 per unit or $114 per sf of rentable space.

Buyer and seller didn’t respond to GlobeSt.com’s request for comment. But a spokeswoman for Hollywood, FL, attorney Ronald P. Gossett, who represents the seller, confirmed the transaction for GlobeSt.com. Gossett was unavailable for comment.

Bluegreen did not identify the property or the purchase price in a recently released shareholder’s statement that announced the acquisition.

Last February, Bethel Beach Club Partners, a corporation controlled by Fort Lauderdale-based Millennium Vacation Group Inc., filed a Chapter 11 petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Miami to reorganize its assets under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The Boca Raton company acquired the seven-story, one-acre property under court supervision just prior to a scheduled auction by Pompano Beach, FL-based Fisher Auction Co. Inc.

Of the 65 units, market reports estimate that 20 studio apartments had rented for about $85 a day; 26 one-bedroom units at $120; and nine two-bedroom units at $160.

In the shareholder’s statement, the company advised it acquired about 3,000 timeshare intervals that should yield about $70 million in timeshare revenue over an anticipated four-year sell-out period.

The company expects to begin sales sometime in September through its Bluegreen Vacation Club, with plans to complete renovations by February next year.

George Donovan, Bluegreen president and chief executive officer, says in a prepared statement the acquisition is important for the company because it fulfills about half of Bluegreen’s forecasted inventory requirements through the end of 2002.

“(The acquisition) will allow Bluegreen to add a higher-priced product to our club system, effectively increasing average sales price and overall revenues, while taking advantage of our sales distribution system that accelerates annual sales volume by allocating product to multiple sites,” Donovan says. “Most of the inventory will be sold off-site, and we are ready to hit the ground running with this.”

News of the acquisition comes as the Boca Raton company reported a 60% drop in net revenue for the fiscal year ended April 1.

The company reported a net gain of $2.7 million, or 11 cents a share, on total sales of $226.3 million for the year ended April 1, compared with a net gain of $6.8 million, or 28 cents per diluted share, on total sales of $214.5 million for the same period in 2000.