Billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin appears to have squared off his oceanfront estate — the largest in Palm Beach — by buying a house next door for $99.13 million. That’s according to sources familiar with the transaction and a deed filing Friday at the Palm Beach County Courthouse.
The sale of the beachfront house at 60 Blossom Way, on the north side of Griffin’s estate, is the second biggest-dollar single seller/single buyer deal ever in Palm Beach, according to courthouse records.
Financier and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank H. McCourt Jr. was on the seller’s side. McCourt paid a recorded $77.06 million for the house in April 2017, using a trust, and had it homesteaded in the latest property-tax rolls.
The off-market deal adds 3.7 acres — and about 320 feet of beachfront — to the 17 acres of ocean-to-lake property Griffin already owned. In all, Griffin now has nearly a quarter-mile of beach frontage, or about 1,188 feet.
Griffin’s estate at 1290 S. Ocean Blvd. lies about a quarter-mile south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago on the stretch of coastal road known to locals as Billionaires Row.
The dollar amount of the Friday’s sale trails only a transaction recorded at $105 million in early July for an estate immediately south of Griffin’s land; the buyer behind the limited liability company that bought that ocean-to-lake property at 1295 S. Ocean Blvd. has never been publicly identified.
Griffin’s estate is mostly vacant land. He has spent at least $350 million to assemble the land in multiple purchases since late 2012. He has razed several houses there, but has kept and remodeled two homes on the property for himself and his family to use on their stays in Palm Beach. In May, he got the town’s permission to demolish a third house, the only lakefront property on his estate.
Griffin used a Delaware limited liability company named Providencia Partners LLC as the property ownership entity, the deed shows.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates was involved in the sale recorded Friday, sources confirmed, but his exact role isn’t clear. Moens has brokered Griffin’s Palm Beach real estate deals since 2012 and almost all of those occurred off market. Moens couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
McCourt, his trustee and a spokesman for Griffin also couldn’t be reached.
In all, real estate sales in Palm Beach recorded since July 1 have topped $517 million, according to the prices filed with the deeds.
The house Griffin just bought reportedly has 27,000 square feet. It was built in 2000 and designed and decorated by architect Peter Marino in a Polynesian style with a Balinese influence, according to news reports for the late billionaire George Lindemann and his family. Lindemann sold it in 2008.
The deed for the house was not fully viewable in the preliminary information about the sale posted late Friday afternoon on the Palm Beach County Clerk’s website.
But sources confirmed for the Daily News that Griffin was the buyer. He heads Chicago-based Citadel, a hedge fund, and is the lead benefactor of the Norton Museum’s recent expansion in West Palm Beach. He has been involved in several high-profile real estate deals over the past few years, including a $238 million purchase in January of a New York City penthouse.
Griffin, who has longtime family ties to South Florida, has a net worth of about $12.7 billion, according to the latest Forbes rankings. In March, he ranked No. 4 on a Forbes' list of the country's highest-earning hedge-fund managers.
Last year, Griffin pulled the plug on a massive oceanfront residence — stretching longer than a football field — that he had planned to build on his property. He has not yet submitted plans for a new house on the oceanfront part of the estate.
It was unclear if any other agency took part in Friday’s transaction. No real estate agent or agency claimed to represent McCourt when he bought the house in the off-market two years ago.
Friday’s deed lists Jeffrey J. Ingram on the seller’s side as trustee of The 60 Blossom Way Trust. Ingram is president of McCourt LP, McCourt’ investment firm in New York City. McCourt serves as chairman and CEO his firm.
McCourt’s trust had bought the house from a company linked in business records to Venezuelan banker and polo enthusiast Victor Vargas. In late August, another Vargas-related company sold a house at 1960 S. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach for a recorded $43 million to a company linked to Las Vegas-based resort and casino magnate Steve Wynn. Agent Cristina Condon of Sotheby's International Realty was the listing agent in that deal.
In 2017, McCourt paid $20 million for a 40-acre equestrian estate on Southfield Road in Wellington. The same year, McCourt and his wife, Monica McCourt, sold a Wellington estate on Fairlane Court for $11.85 million, property records show.
Frank McCourt has family ties to Boston. His company traces its roots to 1893 and a road-building company founded by John McCourt, according to a company profile at McCourt.com. McCourt LP's investment portfolio is “managed by its business arm, McCourt Global" and focuses on "real estate investment and development, finance, sports, media, and communications.”
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This story has been updated to include the name of the buyer’s limited liability company.
