Ken Griffin’s Citadel Buys Offices on Palm Beach’s Worth Ave

Billionaire Ken Griffin bought an office building on Worth Avenue for $83 million, marking the hedge funder’s latest move to home in on Palm Beach, after a near takeover of Miami’s Brickell.

An entity tied to Griffin’s Citadel bought the nearly 50,000-square-foot office building at 125 Worth Avenue from an affiliate of Frisbie Group and Dreyfuss Management, according to records and real estate database Vizzda.

Completed in 1974, the three-story building sits on 0.8 acres, Vizzda records show. Palm Beach-based Frisbie Group paid $30.7 million for the building in 2017. Bethesda, Maryland-based Dreyfuss owned a stake in the property, state corporate records show.

Griffin, who moved his Citadel and Citadel Securities’ headquarters to Brickell and has purchased significant property there, has also kept his eye on Palm Beach.

An entity tied to Citadel owns the three-story commercial building at 151 Worth Avenue, which is next to its newly purchased office building, according to state corporate records.

Zia Ahmed, a spokesperson for Griffin, initially declined comment for this story but after publication, he emailed The Real Deal to say that Griffin, and not Citadel, is the buyer of both 125 and 151 Worth Avenue.

The buying entity, 125 Worth, lists Gerald A. Beeson as its “authorized person” and Citadel’s downtown Miami office address at the Southeast Financial Center in state corporate filings. Beeson is Citadel’s COO, according to the firm’s website.

Similarly, Beeson and Citadel’s Southeast Financial Center office address are listed in state records for the entity that owns the building at 151 Worth Avenue. The filings show that shortly after news broke last July that Citadel would be opening an office there, the firm took an ownership stake in the property by taking over the entity that owns the building.

151 Worth Avenue used to be home to Neiman Marcus department store.

The 125 and 151 Worth Avenue buildings give Citadel nearly 98,000 square feet on 1.8 acres.

In Brickell, Griffin paid a record $363 million for land at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, where the firm is expected to eventually base its headquarters. In the meantime, the firm also leased roughly 95,000 square feet at the 830 Brickell office tower, which is expected to be completed this year.