By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services
APACHE JUNCTION — More than four square miles of state land in Pinal County is being auctioned off this coming month for what might seem like bargain-basement prices.
But odds are you won’t be to bid on it even if you have the $68 million minimum bid price — or at least the 10% down with 25 years to pay it off.
In what appears to be the first-of-a-kind auction, the Arizona Land Department will be taking bids only from those with unrestricted cash or equivalents of at least $40 million, have a net worth of not less than $400 million, and have “relevant experience’’ in developing a planned community of at least 1,000 acres and at least 2,000 residential units.
But top officials at the Arizona Land Department say the minimum bid price in the range of $25,000 an acre is not giving anything away. Nor they say is it aimed at giving Brookfield Residential, the developer who made the request for the auction for the 2,783 acre parcel in Apache Junction and adjacent to existing development, a leg up over others.
