Ken Griffin Is the Buyer Behind $106.875 Million Miami Deal

The buyer is hedge-fund billionaire

Ken Griffin,

who has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trophy real estate in Florida over the past few years, according to a source familiar with the transaction. Mr. Griffin recently announced that his company Citadel was relocating from Chicago to Miami. The Real Deal earlier reported the identity of the buyer.

The seller is businesswoman and philanthropist

Adrienne Arsht,

whose 4-acre estate overlooking Biscayne Bay came on the market in January asking $150 million. Mr. Griffin was represented by Jill Hertzberg of the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker Realty.

“As the steward of this beautiful property, I am proud to leave its legacy to the next generations of caretakers,” Ms. Arsht said in a statement. “May they also enjoy the breathtaking view!”

Ms. Cusack said the deal came together quickly, with the buyer visiting the property for the first time in July.

Ms. Arsht plans to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity, but hasn’t yet decided which one, Ms. Cusack said. 

The estate includes two separate houses, with a total of 12 bedrooms and roughly 25,000 square feet of living space. The first of the two homes, known as Indian Spring, was built by Ms. Arsht about 20 years ago, on land once owned by Ziegfeld Follies star Peggy Hopkins Joyce and her then-husband, millionaire lumberman James Stanley Joyce. It has 20-foot-high ceilings, a great room for entertaining and a formal dining room with seating for up to 20 guests. Ms. Arsht bought that site in the late 1990s for roughly $4 million. 

The second home on the property is known as Villa Serena. The Mediterranean Revival-style house was built in 1913 for three-time presidential candidate and onetime U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Ms. Arsht bought the house in the late 2000s for about $12 million and completely restored it. 

The estate also has an outdoor tennis court and a pool. 

The properties are located near Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, the elaborate early-1900s estate of industrialist James Deering.

Ms. Arsht is the former head of TotalBank, which was owned by her family but sold to Banco Popular Español for $300 million in 2007. Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts was named for her after she donated $30 million to the center in 2008. 

While $100 million sales have become more common in neighboring Palm Beach County, this is the first deal to sell for nine figures in Miami, Ms. Cusack said. The previous Miami-Dade County record was set earlier this year when Phillip Ragon, founder of the technology company InterSystems, paid roughly $93 million for three adjacent homes on the ocean in Golden Beach.

Ms. Cusack said Ms. Arsht’s property drew both local and international interest and that the sale price speaks to the changing perception of Miami as a business and cultural center.

Until now, Mr. Griffin has purchased more property in Palm Beach than Miami. He has spent roughly a decade and approximately $350 million buying parcels of land in Palm Beach to assemble one of the largest private waterfront sites in the county, and has filed plans to build a grand estate, records show. He also has homes in New York, London, Chicago, Hawaii, the Hamptons and Aspen, records show.

Write to Katherine Clarke at [email protected]