Hillsborough-based Big Cat Rescue, which became famous in 2020 thanks to the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King,” sold a portion of its land to a Florida developer for $19.5 million last month, according to a deed of the sale.
Howard Baskin, who helped run the rescue with his wife, Carole, for 20 years, said in a phone call on Wednesday that they sold about 55 acres, which developers will use to build about 200 townhomes.
He said he also expects to close a deal in the next week with a different developer who wants to build about 280 apartments on the remaining 11 acres at the north end of the property.
Big Cat Rescue announced in March 2023 its plans to send the animals in its care to a facility in Arkansas and sell its land in the Citrus Park area of Hillsborough County.
The Baskins said at the time that their move to sell their property was a victory for big cat rights because it’s a sign of a decreased need for animal sanctuaries.
“To drive through and drive by enclosures that used to have a tiger that would come up to see you when you came by and it’s empty, there’s a certain nostalgia,” Baskin said on Wednesday. “But the overarching emotion is, we are thrilled with what’s happened.”
Baskin said “it’s an absolute win-win” for captive cats, who have more space at their new facility. He said Big Cat Rescue has always spent part of its revenue funding projects that help prevent big cat extinction, and that funding will be ramped up “very significantly” with proceeds from this sale.
Jeannette Jason, with the commercial real estate firm Northmarq’s Tampa office, confirmed the Dec. 23 deal with the Tampa Bay Times.
Jason and her team brokered the deal between Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue, and an entity linked to Boos Development Group — a private real estate and development company headquartered in Clearwater.
The Baskins’ facility once housed 200 cats. By 2023, they were down to 41.
The Baskins worked to help pass 2022’s Big Cat Public Safety Act, a federal law that banned private ownership of big cats and cub petting — the country’s main driver of big-cat breeding and overpopulation.
“For thirty one years the mission of Big Cat Rescue has been expressed as having three prongs: to give the best life we could to the cats in our care, to stop the abuse, and to avoid extinction of big cats in the wild,” Howard Baskin wrote in an online statement in in 2023. “For those same thirty years we have always said that our goal was to “put ourselves out of business,” meaning that there would be no big cats in need of rescue and no need for the sanctuary to exist.”
The animals at Big Cat Rescue have since been moved to 450-acre Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, which is outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Baskin said the facility is large enough that animals have around 20,000 square feet to roam, compared to the three or 4,000 the Baskins could provide on their property.
“That’s been wonderful to see,” he said. “We have visited and seen them bounding around in this big open space.”