Old Burt Reynolds ranch in Jupiter Farms up for sale

A Jupiter Farms ranch once owned by Burt Reynolds soon could be sold to help shore up the Palm Beach County School District’s budget woes.

The district will seek bids to buy all or part of the 153-acre ranch off 100th Avenue North, Joe Sanches, its chief of support operations, told school board members in a memo Monday.

The district faces a budget gap of $50 million for the next school year. A recent appraisal valued the property at about $4.025 million, Sanches said.

The district had planned to build a middle school on the site when it bought it from the actor in 1999 for $3.85 million.

Recent enrollment projections, however, say the rural area west of the town of Jupiter won’t need a middle school for at least another 10 years. The district has said it has neither the money nor the intention to build any new schools for at least that long.

District officials first thought of selling the property last April. Their budget advisory committee in December recommended selling the land.

According to the memo, the district will seek bids either to buy the entire property or to buy all but 40 acres. The district would retain those 40 acres in case it ever chose to build a middle school there.

The Palm Beach County School Board would have to sign off on any sale of the site, on which the only tenant now is the Town and Country Feed and Supply Store, which pays the district rent.

Reynolds owned the ranch for years and shot scenes from the movie Smokey and the Bandit and the television series B.L Stryker there. He also married actress Loni Anderson at a chapel on the property in 1988.