By Sean Stewart-Muniz
Campbell Soup heiress Mary Alice Dorrance Malone’s appetite for Wellington land has her neighbors saying “mmm, mmm good.”
The billionaire just bought out an estate adjacent to her property assemblage for $7.3 million, nearly 12 times what the previous owner paid in the late 1990s.
Palm Beach County records show a limited liability company called Meinse, managed by Malone, purchased the 10-acre estate at 4220 South Shore Boulevard from a trust in the name of Stephen L. Martines.
The ranch’s last purchase price: $630,000 in 1997.
This latest deal brings Malone’s holdings to eight parcels between Indian Mound Road and Lake Worth Road, plus an outlying ranch roughly two miles away at 4595 South 125th Avenue. Altogether, they add up to just under 65 acres.
Malone, whose net worth is pegged at $4 billion by Forbes, is Campbell Soup’s largest shareholder and the granddaughter of the company’s founder, John Dorrance. She’s also a known equestrian enthusiast and owner of the 1,000-acre Iron Spring Farm horse breeding and training business in Pennsylvania.
She’s come to the right neighborhood: Wellington is a famous equestrian town in South Florida that’s attracted well-to-do executives including Bill Gates, who just finished assembling an entire street for more than $38 million.
In the past year, however, its polo clubs and horse ranches have become fodder for developers. The owners of Wellington’s long-standing Gulfstream Polo Club recently sold their lands to Pulte Homes for $49 million, and both Lennar Homes and CalAtlantic have holdings in the area.
