Find out who paid record price for the Arsht Estate in Miami overlooking Biscayne Bay

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 four-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.

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 on the Miami residential real estate deal.

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.

Chicago business titan Griffin continues to take Miami by storm. In late December, Griffin dropped $75 million — at the time a county record for a home purchase — for a two-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.

“Miami is a vibrant, growing metropolis that embodies the American Dream — embracing the possibilities of what can be achieved by a community working to build a future together,” Griffin, 53, wrote in a letter to employees announcing Citadel’s relocation.

Last month, Citadel, a hedge-fund manager, and sister company Citadel Securities, a securities trading firm, signed a nearly five-year 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.

Acquiring the Arsht property is another crown jewel in Griffin’s personal real estate portfolio. He 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.

The Arsht transaction exemplifies Miami’s lingering appeal during the pandemic to out-of-state, wealthy buyers, most of them working in technology, finance and the law. Some are coming as part of company relocations, while others are working remotely from here.

On Friday, Ron Shuffield, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty, the real estate firm that listed Arsht’s estate, said in a statement: “The first residential property in Miami to surpass the $100 million sale mark will forever hold a prominent place in Miami’s history. Today’s record sale is a testament to the ever-increasing global interest in our hometown.”

Berkshire Hathaway’s Senior Vice President Ashley Cusack who handled the Arsht listing and Jill Hertzberg of The Jills Zeder Group who represented the buyer, declined to reveal the identity of the buyer.

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.

Meanwhile, Griffin has donated millions over the years to many community projects in Chicago and he’s started doing the same in Miami and South Florida.

The Miami newcomer, who was born in Daytona Beach and attended middle school and high school in Boca Raton, donated $5 million towards development of The Underline, the 10-mile linear park and trail under construction beneath Miami’s elevated Metrorail line. He made another $5 million gift to help launch Miami Connect, an effort to provide needy Miami-Dade households with free high-speed internet. Griffin also gave $20 million towards the recently completed expansion of the Norton Museum of Art in West 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.