Carlton Palms Education Center is on the auction block
Nestled on the shore of placid Lake Carlton near Mount Dora, the tree-lined campuses of the former Carlton Palms Educational Center, now on the auction block, offer a tranquil surrounding, a swimming pool, a tennis court and a long history of abuse.
“The grounds of Carlton Palms would make a beautiful cemetery ...” said Matthew Dietz, a lawyer and advocate for Florida’s most severely disabled people, some of whom lived there — and a few who died there before the state ordered the for-profit center to close. “I can’t imagine that anything that represents hope can ever thrive on that property.” But Todd Good can. Good, president of Californiabased Accelerated Marketing Group, has organized the sealedbid auction of the former Bellwether Behavioral/AdvoServe institution, a two-property operation valued last year at $2.7 million by the Lake County Property Appraiser.
“These are two great pieces of property that should have a future use,” he said.
Good envisions the picturesque sites as a church campus, a rehabilitation center, an assisted living facility or another school, possible uses allowed under the existing Lake County zoning designation of “community facilities district.”
“It’s just pretty and it’s on the water,” he said.
Good said the reputation of Carlton Palms, dubbed a “house of horrors” by the online investigative journalism site ProPublica, should not affect the market value of either venue, which sit about four miles west of U.S. 441.
Both properties are on septic systems and pump water from on-site wells.
“The majority of people that we’ve talked to … have never