South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Hedge-fund billionaire Griffin pays $106.9M for Miami estate
MIAMI — Hedge-fund billionaire and Florida native Ken Griffin, who is moving his Chicago financial services firm to Miami, bought the sprawling Arsht Estate in Coconut Grove last week for $106.9 million, a Miami-Dade record for a residential sale.
Griffin acquired the 4-acre property overlooking Biscayne Bay from well-known Miami philanthropist and lawyer Adrienne Arsht, according to sources familiar with the deal who requested anonymity. The sale fell short of the estate’s asking price of $150 million when it went on the market in January.
Griffin, who was born in
Daytona Beach, has jumped into Florida politics as well.
He has given more than $10 million to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ affiliated political committee Friends of Ron DeSantis since 2018, according to campaign finance reports, including $5 million this cycle. He also gave $5 million to the Republican Party of Florida in August as DeSantis runs for reelection against Democrat U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist on Nov. 8.
Neisen Kasdin, co-managing partner of the Miami law firm Akerman which prepared the deed transfer on the historic property, said he could neither confirm nor deny the identity of the buyer.
A spokesman for Citadel, the Chicago company Griffin founded in 1990 and leads as CEO, declined to comment.
The property comes with a two-story historic residence built in 1913 for three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and a mansion custom-built for Arsht in 1999. She has donated millions to charitable foundations in Miami, most notably her namesake, the county’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
In late December, Griffin dropped $75 million, at the time a county record for a home purchase, for a 2-acre residence in Miami Beach’s Star Island. In June, Citadel announced the beginning of its corporate move to Miami after 32 years in Chicago.
Last month, Citadel, a hedge-fund manager, and sister company Citadel Securities, a securities trading firm, signed a nearly fiveyear office lease for about 90,000 square feet at 830 Brickell, the 57-story office tower in Miami’s financial district. Griffin’s businesses also bought land to eventually build an office building on Brickell Bay Drive.
Griffin has a well-documented penchant for buying extravagantly expensive homes throughout the United States and abroad. His estimated $1 billion of residential property holdings include a $238 million penthouse in Manhattan and a $122 million London mansion.
He has spent even more — a tidy $350 million — to assemble a 20-acre estate stretching from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean in the town of Palm Beach.
His net worth is reported to be as much as nearly $30 billion, making him one of the 50 wealthiest people in the world.
Arsht, 80, who moved to the Washington, D.C., area, had resided in her Miami home called Indian Spring since it was built in 1999. It covers nearly 13,000 square feet and has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The compound has a tennis court, a pool perched on a bluff and a guest house with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a gym above a six-car garage.
The estate includes a separate 5,200-square-foot, three-bedroom historic residence, Villa Serena. The two-story house, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms includes a guest house on top of a three-car garage.
The house was designed by August Geiger, one of the most prominent American architects. Arsht worked with preservationists to place Villa Serena on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.