Billionaire Ken Griffin is selling, for $80.5 million, the empty building that once housed Neiman Marcus in the ocean block of Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Daily News has confirmed.
The sale of 151 Worth Ave. could close as early as Nov. 17, according to Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Griffin. He declined further comment.
The buyer has not yet been identified by the Palm Beach Daily News. It’s also unclear if the $80.5 million sold price will match the one to be recorded with the deed at the Palm Beach County Courthouse.
The Palm Beach Daily News is the first media outlet to report the in-the-works deal.
A Giffin-controlled limited liability company bought the vacant former department store building in 2022 for a recorded $78 million. The purchase included the structure’s underground parking garage and an adjacent vacant lot on Peruvian Avenue, the street immediately north of Worth Avenue.
At one point, Griffin had said he would open a satellite office of his Citadel financial empire in the building.
The building is one of two adjacent buildings Griffin bought on Worth Avenue, the world-famous upscale shopping-and-dining venue, over the past few years.
The three-level building has 48,578 square feet of space, property records show. It occupies a lot of about an acre on the north side of Worth Avenue.
The sale price of the building that Griffin’s ownership company is selling on Worth Avenue works out to about $1,657 per square foot, based on the building’s size and the $80.5 million sold price.
Another of Griffin’s companies owns an office building at 125 Worth Ave., immediately east of the former Neiman Marcus building. Griffin bought No. 125 for a recorded $83 million from the Palm Beach-based Frisbie Group real estate investment company in July 2023.
Griffin founded and is CEO of Citadel LLC, a hedge-fund firm, and Citadel Securities. He han estimated net worth of $50 billion, according to Forbes.com.
Griffin owns the largest residential estate in Palm Beach, although he and his immediate family live in Miami, where a few years ago he moved the headquarters of his Citadel hedge-fund firm and his Citadel Securities firm from their longtime home in Chicago He has since become involved in a number of major real estate projects in Miami-Dade County, including plans for a skyscraper to house the Citadel companies in downtown Miami.
Neiman Marcus closed its Worth Avenue location in September 2020, and the building has remained vacant since.
In March 2023, Griffin spoke about his plans for the former Neiman Marcus building during a talk at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.
“We will be redeveloping it to have a fantastic storefront experience and restaurant experience and office space on the second and third floors,” Griffin said during the Four Arts program.
Asked at the time about a timeframe for the building’s redevelopment, the billionaire in 2023 said: “I’ll be updating that, actually, in the next two or three weeks. That’s on our list of development projects right now. And that one’s important to me. It’s right here in Palm Beach.”
The talk at the Four Arts was held a couple of years into the real estate boom that followed the initial emergency response to the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. During the first year of the health crisis, Griffin made national headlines when he rented out the entire Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach, where he opened a quarantined trading floor staffed by employees of Citadel Securities.
During the Four Arts talk in 2023, Griffin said strong interest in the former Neiman Marcus building from prospective tenants had surprised him: “You cannot believe the number of incoming phone calls (from) people looking for space here in Palm Beach.”
He added: “It seems that people in retail and in restaurants — they want space here.”
But the building remained empty, with little sign of activity evident there in the ensuing years.
Meanwhile, construction continues on a mansion Griffin is building for his mother on 7 acres of his 27-acre estate on Billionaires Row, a half-mile south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.
Griffin’s ownership company, 151 Worth LLC, had bought the old Neiman Marcus building in 2022 from another limited liability company, Wilson 151 Worth LLC, which is affiliated with New York City-based O’Connor Capital Partners, a real estate investment, development and management firm. The O’Connor family owns The Esplanade shopping center at 150 Worth Ave., directly across the street from the building that just changed hands.
After Neiman Marcus closed, the only other department store operating on Worth Avenue was Saks Fifth Avenue in The Esplanade. But Saks closed in April, and O’Connor is redeveloping the space into individual storefronts.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Subscribe today to support our journalism.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Ken Griffin selling old Neiman Marcus building on Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue for $80.5M
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
