Seed magnate Ronald Holden and his wife, Arlene Holden, sold their 1.1-acre waterfront estate in the gated Admirals Cove neighborhood for $34 million, making it the most expensive home ever sold in Jupiter.
Admirals Cove is an affluent enclave in the coastal town, home to high-profile residents like Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Major League Baseball’s Max Scherzer and BlackRock’s Rick Rieder.
Records show the Holdens sold the mansion at 209 Commodore Drive to Stacey Goel, the wife of hedge funder David Goel. David Goel co-founded Waltham, Massachusetts-based Matrix Capital Management. The couple donated $100 million to Harvard University, David Goel’s alma mater, in 2019, according to the Harvard Gazette.
Rob Thomson of Waterfront Properties & Club Communities represented both sides of the deal. Thomson placed sixth in The Real Deal’s 2023 ranking of Palm Beach County brokers with $203 million in on-market deals.
Ronald Holden was the longtime head of his family’s seed company, Holden’s Foundation Seeds in Williamsburg, Iowa. The family sold to seed giant Monsanto in 1997 for $1 billion. At the time of the deal, Holden’s Foundation Seeds produced 35 percent of the seeds used to grow corn in the U.S., according to the New York Times.
The Holdens were deeded the Commodore Drive mansion in 2007 by homebuilder Ronald Pertnoy, records show. Pertnoy bought the 1.1-acre site for $3.1 million in 2001, according to property records. He completed the 24,300-square-foot mansion in 2007. It has nine bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and one half-bathroom. The estate includes a pool, a three-bedroom guest house, a putting green, two docks and 300 feet of waterfront, the listing shows.
The Holdens listed it for $40 million in August, Redfin shows. The sale tops the previous Jupiter price record, set last year when Dr. Mazin Shikara and his wife, Julissa Shikara, sold their waterfront mansion for $27.5 million.
It follows another record deal in nearby Jupiter Inlet Colony, where disaster management mogul Nate Albers bought a waterfront mansion for $30.2 million last month.