Billionaire Ken Griffin has bought a Worth Avenue office building for $83 million, marking the hedge fund’s latest close bid for Miami’s Brickell Later, it moved to Palm Beach.
An entity related to Griffin’s Citadel purchased the nearly 50,000-square-foot office building at 125 Worth Avenue from affiliates of the Frisbie Group and Dreyfuss Management, according to records and real estate database Vizzda.
Vizzda records show the three-story building was completed in 1974 and sits on 0.8 acres. Palm Beach-based Frisbie Group paid $30.7 million for the building in 2017. Bethesda, Maryland-based Dreyfuss owns a stake in the property, state corporate records show.
Griffin, who moved the headquarters of Citadel and Citadel Securities to Brickell and bought a lot of real estate there, has also kept his eye on Palm Beach.
A Citadel-related entity owns a three-story commercial building at 151 Worth Avenue adjacent to its newly purchased office building, according to state corporate records.
Citadel spokeswoman Zia Ahmed declined to confirm that the company was the buyer of 125 Worth Avenue.
The purchasing entity, 125 Worth, lists Gerald A. Beeson as its “authorized person” on its state corporation filings and lists Citadel’s office address in the Southeast Financial Center in downtown Miami as its “authorized person.” Beeson is Citadel’s chief operating officer, according to the company’s website.
Likewise, the Southeast Financial Center office address of Beeson and Citadel is listed on the state records of the entity that owns the 151 Worth Avenue building. Shortly after news broke last July that Citadel would open an office there, the company took ownership of the property by taking over the entity that owns the building, the documents show.
151 Worth Avenue was once the home of the Neiman Marcus department store.
The buildings at 125 and 151 Worth Avenue provide the Citadel with nearly 98,000 square feet of space on 1.8 acres.
In Brickell, Citadel paid a record $363 million for the land at 1201 Brickell Bay Boulevard, where the company is expected to eventually be headquartered. Meanwhile, the company has also leased about 95,000 square feet of space in the 830 Brickell office building, which is expected to be completed this year.
