Ted Turner Leaves Behind Real Estate, Conservation Legacy

Plenty has been written about the impact Ted Turner left on the media industry. His real estate and conservation legacy is unique, too.

Turner, the cable news pioneer and CNN founder who died on Wednesday at 87 years old, was best known for revolutionizing the television news business, owning the Atlanta Braves and for his philanthropic efforts. As noted by Bloomberg, his conservation efforts were notable as well.

Turner racked up a portfolio of more than 2 million acres across the United States, land holdings that stretched from the Southeast to the Great Plains and the West. He was named the fourth-largest landowner in the country by the Land Report and often ranked among the biggest owners in the country, trailing only Stan Kroenke, the Emmerson family and John Malone.

From 2007 to 2010, he held the top spot before Malone usurped him.

“Ted Turner was a pioneer as a corporate titan who plowed his profits into land,” said Land Report editor Eric O’Keefe told Bloomberg.

Turner first began buying ranches in 1987 and never slowed down, amassing contiguous tracts that carried both economic and ecological possibilities. His ranches have included both luxury resorts and livestock businesses; Turner was responsible for boosting the survival of bison and his Turner Enterprises oversees the world’s largest private herd of the animal.

Turner’s largest ranch was Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico, which spans 560,000 acres. Another New Mexico property, Armendaris Ranch, landed an easement in 2022 that ranks as one of the largest in the nation’s history as Turner fought to protect land from commercial development and subdivision.

Turner wasn’t a real estate developer himself, but his businesses naturally required plenty of space. In 1985, he bought a majority stake in the struggling Omni International complex in Downtown Atlanta, according to Bisnow, reversing the property’s fortunes as it became home to CNN.

He even put his own home atop the CNN Center.

“He didn’t build CNN Center, but his occupancy at that time really created a destination place that lasted for many years,” Central Atlanta Progress President A.J. Robinson told Bisnow.

— Holden Walter-Warner