Hedge Fund billionaire Ken Griffin buys historic Miami cottage for $2.98 million

Miami city commissioners voted unanimously on Thursday to sell Ken Griffin a $2.98 million parcel in the Brickell financial district, handing the Citadel founder the last piece of a city block he has spent nearly four years assembling.

The land at 190 Southeast 12th Terrace sits across the street from 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, where Griffin plans a 54-story global headquarters for Citadel and Citadel Securities. The city owned the plot. Standing on it is a 121-year-old white wood-frame cottage built in 1905 as the office of Dr. James Jackson, Miami's first physician and the namesake of the Jackson Health System.

The building originally stood on Flagler Street in downtown Miami and was moved to the Brickell Bay Drive area in 1917. Dade Heritage Trust, a preservation nonprofit, has run its headquarters from the cottage since 1978 and holds a lease signed in 2022.

Commissioner Damian Pardo, who sponsored the measure, said the price was supported by an independent appraisal carried out under the city's standard valuation process, addressing public questions about the figure.

Cottage bound for Coconut Grove

Under a separate arrangement, Griffin will fund the preservation and relocation of the structure. Dade Heritage Trust said it will move to Coconut Grove and will own both the building and the land beneath it, a change from the current setup in which the city holds title to each. Executive director Christine Rupp declined to disclose the new address, the size of the site or what the nonprofit paid.

David Millar, a Citadel spokesman, described the Jackson office as a link to Miami's earliest years and said the firm was helping secure its future in Coconut Grove. The relocation still requires approval from Miami's Historic and Environmental Preservation Board.

Four years of buying in Brickell

Griffin announced in June 2022 that Citadel and Citadel Securities would leave Chicago for Miami. He bought the waterfront site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive that year for a reported $363 million. The Miami Herald estimates he has spent roughly $700 million on property in the area since the move was announced.

The most striking piece of that campaign was the Solaris, a 22-story condominium tower next to the cottage. Griffin spent about $125 million over roughly three years acquiring all 138 units plus the ground-floor retail space through a chain of anonymous Delaware limited liability companies, Bloomberg reported this month.

Sellers were not told who was behind the offers. One of the first to sell took just over $500,000 in December 2022. Late holdouts secured more than $1.5 million. Griffin paid an average of $875 per square foot between late 2022 and mid-2025, about 21 percent above comparable pricing in the area, according to Redfin data cited by Bloomberg. Citadel chief workplace officer Paul Darrah confirmed Griffin as the buyer at a real estate summit in June. The tower is slated for demolition.

The headquarters plan

Griffin revised the headquarters proposal this year, dropping a planned hotel to make room for more office space and adding a 300-unit apartment building and a 1,420-space parking garage alongside the 1.7 million-square-foot tower.

The parcels sit inside Miami-Dade County's Rapid Transit Zone, which routes the project through county review rather than City of Miami zoning and allows greater height and density near transit. County commissioners approved the headquarters in December, granting a variance that cut the tower's setback from Biscayne Bay to 40 feet from the standard 50.

Griffin's fortune

Forbes estimated Griffin's net worth at $52.2 billion as of Thursday, ranking him the 35th-wealthiest person in the world. Citadel, which he founded in 1990 after trading convertible bonds from a Harvard dormitory, manages an estimated $68 billion. He established Citadel Securities as a market maker in 2002 and remains its non-executive chairman.

His property holdings extend well beyond Brickell. He paid $106.9 million in September 2022 for a Miami estate, holds one of the largest private land assemblages in Palm Beach, and bought a Manhattan penthouse at 220 Central Park South for about $238 million in 2019, then the most expensive home sale recorded in the United States.

Thursday's vote also marks the second time Griffin has agreed to move a Miami landmark rather than raze it. He previously committed roughly $20 million to relocate the bayfront home once owned by William Jennings Bryan, which stands on the estate he acquired in 2022, to the nearby Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

Rupp said the nonprofit's priority remains preserving and maintaining the cottage, and that details of the move are still being worked out. Griffin's purchase closes subject to the existing lease, with his entity assuming the landlord obligations.