The Mosaic Company has sold the prestigious Streamsong golf resort built atop a former phosphate mine a decade ago.
The resort in rural southeastern Polk County includes three courses ranked among the nation’s top 20 by Golfweek.
Mosaic announced on Friday that Kemper Sports Management, which has been managing the resort, paid $160 million for the courses, a 216-room lodge, several restaurants and a clubhouse.
A fourth course under construction will continue.
Lakeland-based Mosaic is the world’s largest supplier of phosphate and potash. Much of its mining has taken place in a corridor known as Bone Valley – named for the masses of prehistoric fossils found in parts of Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee and Hardee counties.
It created Streamsong in 2012 after a Mosaic executive connected the mounds of sand left after mining with the dry, fast conditions found in the coastal "links" of Scotland and Ireland.
The terrain at Streamsong includes towering sand dunes, bunkers and lakes that actually are phosphate pits 30- or 40- feet deep.
Mosaic President and CEO Joc O'Rourke said the company had always planned to find someone else to take over the resort. Kemper Sports has managed the golf operations at Streamsong since 2012, and overseen the entire resort for the past two years.
Since 1975, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has required mining companies to submit reclamation plans returning the land to something close to its original state. Other remade mines in the greater Tampa Bay area include a popular bike trail at Alafia State Park.
