Mount Dora City Council members have passed on an insurance company’s offer to sell the city 4.4 acres along Lake Dora — between the Lakeside Inn and Evans Park — for $4.6 million.
The site is known as “Pineapple Point” and it is the last piece of undeveloped waterfront land available for sale next to the downtown area. In past focus group and community meetings, people have talked about putting a park, retail stores, a restaurant or even a museum on the now-wooded tract.
Council members, however, said the price is too steep and the debt too cumbersome to accept the offer.
“The owner has had the property for 15 years and has not done anything with it,” council member Nick Girone said. “(Buying the property means) it would come off our tax roll. We would take $10,000 off our tax roll, and we have a ton of projects in downtown we want to complete. What is our return on the property? We don’t need to be in the real estate business on that level.”