Historic home fetches highest price ever in Hillsborough County

A McDonald's franchisee and his wife paid $9.5M for the Stovall-Lee House and plan to convert it to a private club

Stovall-Lee House in Tampa (Credit: Tampa Bay Times)
Stovall-Lee House in Tampa (Credit: Tampa Bay Times)

A fast-food restaurateur bought a waterfront house in Tampa for $9.5 million, the highest price ever for a residential property in Hillsborough County.

The buyers, Blake Casper and his wife Tate, closed March 21 on their record-breaking purchase of the Stovall-Lee House, which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974.

Casper is chief executive officer of a company that owns dozens of McDonald’s restaurants in the Tampa area.

A general manager of Florida Brewing Co. in Ybor City built the Stovall-Lee House on a 2.6-acre site along Hillsborough Bay in 1909.

The house was named after Wallace Stovall, founding publisher of the old Tampa Tribune newspaper, and subsequent owners, the Lee family, which arranged for the property’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

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The new owners plan to convert the historic property to a private club with a bed-and-breakfast inn available exclusively to members of the club.

The seller is Harry Teasely Jr., a retired Coca-Cola executive who bought the Stovall-Lee House in 1991 for $2.4 million. He upgraded and expanded the property and listed it for sale three years ago with an asking price just below $14 million.

The $9.5 million price that Teasely got for the Stovall-Lee House is the third-highest price ever for a residential property in the four-county Tampa Bay area.

Last year, the seller of the Century Oaks estate in Pinellas County got $11.18 million for the property. [Tampa Bay Times] Mike Seemuth