Amid heated race, Greene cools on local real estate
Underdog candidate for governor less bullish about his investments.
Eight years ago, Jeff Greene was a political neophyte who spent millions of his fortune on a losing primary campaign for U.S. Senate.
Four years ago, he was the deep-pocketed investor poised to single-handedly transform the skyline of West Palm Beach, a city where he had spent $125 million to amass vacant land and unsold condos.
Today, he’s an underdog gubernatorial candidate whose track record of developing his vast real estate holdings has left some in West Palm Beach underwhelmed.
Polls show Greene, a resident of Palm Beach, running second, third or fourth in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, which takes place Tuesday.
On the campaign trail, Greene stresses his unlikely story as a selfmade billionaire. He waited tables at The Breakers in Palm Beach
and later worked as a doorto-door salesman before finding his fortune in the Southern California real estate market. Forbes pegs Greene’s net worth at $3.3 billion.
His gubernatorial campaign comes as some in West Palm Beach have soured on Greene, the real estate mogul who once seemed ready to lead West Palm Beach out of the Great Recession. In 2011, he embarked on a shopping spree that saw him spend more than $200 million on Palm Beach County real estate, mostly in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach.
Greene has built an apartment complex near Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach, and he bankrolled a private elementary school in West Palm Beach that his children attend. But while he has won city permission to build two splashy towers on Quadrille Boulevard and so-called micro-apartments downtown, he has yet to break ground on those projects.
“There’s major disappointment — even hostility — toward Jeff Greene,” said City Commissioner Paula Ryan.
That’s a sharp departure from Greene’s public image a few years ago. He had been snapping up property in a county still in the throes of a devastating real estate bust. He saw value in Palm Beach County, and West Palm Beach boosters welcomed his ambitious vision to restart the city’s development machine.
“There was a great deal of hype,” Ryan said. “Everybody was looking forward, because the need is great. We need Class A office space. We need micro-units that can provide a different level of workforce housing.”
Greene, for his part, has grown less bullish about the prospects for his hefty investment in downtown West Palm Beach.
“It’s not going that great,” he said Friday.
Greene said he decided not to break ground on One West Palm, his twin-tower project of offices and apartments on Quadrille, in large part because the city created a district with 25-story height limits that would let Related Group build an office tower in a Flagler Drive area that previously limited heights to five stories.
“As long as the city has an uncertain zoning climate, and thinks nothing of changing the zoning of a five-story building to 25 stories, most developers will be uncomfortable investing enormous amounts of capital,” Greene said. “Developers have to know what the rules are.”
As for the micro-apartment project, Greene said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on engineering and design, but he was scared off by a building boom that could add more than 2,000 new apartment units to downtown West Palm Beach.
“We just don’t have the kind of dynamic economy here that has pushed rents up to the point where it makes sense to build new apartments,” Greene said. “All of these new buildings are putting stress on the market.”
Greene said he has been building smaller projects in Palm Beach County, such as an addition to his school and a 24,000-square-foot building near Florida’s Turnpike. And he has been active in Manhattan, where he’s developing a 25-story tower of lux
condos. But, Greene said, demand for space in Palm Beach County isn’t robust enough to encourage him to start construction.
“If it makes sense, I’ll build it,” Greene said.
While Ryan accuses Greene of playing a game of Monopoly with the city’s future, others take a more charitable view of the investor’s patient pace. Neil Merin, a commercial real estate broker and head of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman, noted that Greene’s splashiest proposals are on sites that others had tried and failed to develop.
“Greene has amassed a large amount of developable real estate, most of it other developers’ fractured dreams,” Merin said. “I think the telling point is that all the projects Greene got approved previously had approvals and never got built.”
Greene has proven a keen investor in real estate, but he has been less successful as a candidate. Greene’s first foray into Florida politics was a flop.
Greene ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, seeking the Democratic nomination. Despite spending $24 million, he failed to make the first cut. In the primary, his opponent, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, criticized Greene for netting hundreds of millions of dollars by betting before the bust that borrowers who took out subprime mortgages would default.
The bet paid off big, netting Greene profits of perhaps $500 million, perhaps $800 million — all for an investment of about $24 million. Meek accused Greene of pushing the housing market into a tailspin.
“On nights when Floridians went to bed praying they could save their homes and save the equity in their homes, Mr. Greene was praying that they lose their homes so he can profit and become a billionaire,” Meek said during a 2010 debate.
Greene countered that Meek misunderstood his trade, and PolitiFact.com labeled Meek’s accusation “hyperbole.” Even so, Greene lost in a landslide to Meek, who himself went on to finish last in a three-way race contested by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
“I have no plans to get involved in politics again,” a chastened Greene told The Palm Beach Post soon after the dismal primary result.
Greene turned his attention to his real estate empire. Over the next few years, he sold his vast holdings of apartment complexes in Southern California and, through tax-free exchanges that let him delay paying capital gains taxes, moved more than $200 million into Palm Beach County real estate.
Meanwhile, Greene dis- played an intensifying interest in public policy. In 2015, he hosted the Closing the Gap conference at his oceanfront hotel in Palm Beach. He brought in speakers such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former boxing champion Mike Tyson.
In 2017, Greene hosted another version of the confab, which included speeches by bestselling author Thomas Friedman and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Greene also launched a private school, the Greene School in West Palm Beach, that charges tuition but operates mostly through his largess. In 2017, according to the nonprofit’s tax return, the school brought in $6.6 million, most of it in the form of $6 million in contributions.
“I think long-term, that school is going to be great for the community,” said Harvey Oyer, a land-use attorney who represented Greene in his downtown West Palm Beach projects.
Others who have worked with Greene describe his approach as idiosyncratic. Greene operates his large holdings with a small staff. West Palm Beach architect Rick Gonzalez, who worked for Greene for a time, describes the property owner as a micromanager whose attention was scattered among various projects.
“He was trying to do everything, and that’s very difficult,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve worked with about a dozen different billionaires, and they all have different styles, but they have some staff who can get back to you in a timely manner.”
Greene hired Gonzalez to design his Quadrille Boulevard towers, then later replaced Gonzalez with Arquitectonica, a prominent Miami firm.
While Greene has spent lavishly to buy real estate, start a school and run for governor, he’s also known for frugality. In one dispute, Premier Stoneworks of Delray Beach in 2014 sued him, saying Greene owed $38,000 for work at his oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach.
At The Whitney, a downtown West Palm Beach condo where Greene bought nearly 150 unsold units, the billionaire ruffled feathers by cutting the building’s chief engineer and full-time property manager, instead opting to have one property manager run two buildings whereGreene owns most of the units.
“When he came in and started making changes, people were up in arms,” said Barry O’Brien, who lives in The Whitney. “After a while, the complaints kind of petered out.”
O’Brien said Greene has proven an agreeable owner, attending to maintenance issues such as refurbishing the pool furniture. O’Brien said condo fees at The Whitney have fallen during Greene’s cost-conscious reign.
“My HOA fee went down $45 a month because of all of the savings,” O’Brien said. “I feel that by him owning the building, I’ve benefited from his smarts.”