Babcock Ranch

“It was 91,000 acres, and they negotiated with the family, but the family would only sell the stock, and the state could only buy the assets.”

“And today, we have a 150 megawatts, just to put that in perspective, that's 700,000 panels on 840 acres.”

“Our lake system actually has a smart water management system where it, a computer can predict What the weather's gonna be like in seven to 10 days, and then regulate the amount of water that's in that lake.”

“There's no luck in, in that at all. I was very purposeful. We wanted to be above the storm surge. We want to be certain that during a hurricane that that our residents, that we will all be safe that it wouldn't flood and that a storm surge wouldn't be wouldn't…”

“Eventually it will incorporate, it'll be its own town and it will have a, you know, whether it's a mayor or whatever form of government that ultimately is, is here.”

“We're the only place in southwest Florida that didn't lose electricity.”

“We were not the highest offer, but they went with us, and they gave us one year to do what would normally take five, maybe seven years to do. We had to negotiate with the state of Florida the sale of 73,000 acres.”

“To rebuild a house the way that it was built 20 years ago is, is, in my mind, is, is a big mistake. Because these storms are going to happen again. It, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.”

“And in Florida, you gotta be really careful because you can easily default to just wanting to have... Retirees... So how do you prevent that? Well, you have to have two things. One is jobs, but more importantly, a school.”

“We built a school at Babcock Grants before anybody lived here. I remember we had, we built a school that had a 156 seats... And when it was announced that we had a public charter school, it was or when it was published in the paper, we immediately filled all 1…”

“I do live here. I do have a home here, and I probably spend 70% of my time here and really enjoy it.”

“Mother nature is going to put that water where it wants to put that water. You can do all you want, but mother nature is going to win every single time. So we said, let's work with the nature. Let's not work against it.”

“We wanted to be the first solar power town in America.”

“We actually told the homeowners that in the unlikely event that one of your lakes overflowed, they're designed to do that, and it will, it'll, it'll actually drain between your homes into the roads and then off the property.”

“We have something called Innovation Way here, where we got the three top builders in the country to build homes with technology in them that's not being used today, and to test it, see how it works, and then ultimately, hopefully, implement that into the homes…”

“When I got out the next morning and drove the property, drove over for four or five hours just meeting with neighbors, and other than maybe some shingles on some of the homes, there's very little damage.”

“As a matter of fact, a lot of the people here that that moved here opened up businesses here and half of the people here work from home.”