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FL Selling Off Shuttered Mental Hospital

Florida is selling off a closed hospital and nearly 500 acres to a company that is promising to build a driver training center and hotel.

Gov. Rick Scott and members of the Florida Cabinet on Tuesday voted to sell the former G. Pierce Wood Memorial Hospital to Power Auto Corporation for $2.5 million.

The hospital located near Arcadia treated individuals with special needs and mental illness from 1947 to 2002. It was then used to house juvenile criminals for nearly a decade before it was shut down.

The site still contains a multi-story hospital as well as a gym, warehouses and a chapel. The state asked for more money for the property earlier this year but it did not receive any offers.