Hedge Fund billionaire Ken Griffin's $700 million Miami spree hits a helipad objection

Ken Griffin, the American hedge fund billionaire who founded Citadel, is facing organised resistance to his plan for a private heliport in Miami Beach, a rare check on a buying spree that has reshaped his adopted city.

The leaders of eight luxury condominium buildings along Biscayne Bay have urged local officials to reject the proposal, which would let Griffin land a helicopter at the marina he is building for his yachts near the city's port.

The request, sponsored in June by Miami Beach commissioner Joseph Magazine, would require the city to rewrite its zoning code. It goes before the land-use committee at a public hearing, with other city officials to consider it later this year. Even with city approval, the helipad would still need sign-off from the Florida Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Griffin won approval in November 2025 for one of the largest private megayacht marinas ever proposed in Miami Beach, on Terminal Island along the MacArthur Causeway, near his Star Island compound. He sought it because his 308-foot superyacht would not fit at his existing property.

The scale of his presence is the context for the objection. Since announcing in June 2022 that Citadel and Citadel Securities would leave Chicago for Miami, Griffin has spent an estimated $700 million on property in the area, according to the Miami Herald. He paid a reported $363 million for the waterfront site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, where he plans a 54-storey headquarters, and city commissioners voted unanimously in July to sell him a final $2.98 million parcel completing a city block he had spent nearly four years assembling.

He has separately put close to $500 million into land on Palm Beach's Billionaire Row.