Two Years On, Ken Griffin’s Plan for a Miami Headquarters Finally Begins to Take Shape

Billionaire Ken Griffin made a big splash when he said that his giant hedge-fund firm Citadel was moving its headquarters from Chicago to Miami. It was the most significant relocation of any financial firm to Miami. Now, nearly two years later, a waterfront site Griffin purchased for his planned $1 billion headquarters remains empty. Citadel employees still tap away on keyboards at temporary space in the financial district, and the firm has yet to replace the developer it parted ways with last spring.

But the outlines of Griffin’s office plans are starting to take shape. The new headquarters is being designed by Foster + Partners, which aims to create one of the tallest towers in the city. Griffin is also planning a luxury hotel for the top of the building, according to renderings viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s a unique opportunity to build an iconic building in Miami for Citadel’s future,” said Gerald Beeson, Citadel’s chief operating officer. Citadel is also planning new office spaces in New York City and further growth in London. But the main headquarters will be in Miami, which Griffin frequently extols as “Wall Street South.” The new building reflects his continuing effort to leave his mark on the city’s skyline, a pursuit that has captivated Miami’s business community since his much ballyhooed arrival.

“Ken Griffin has been the highest profile transplant to Miami since LeBron James,” said Nitin Motwani, managing partner of Merrimac Ventures and developer of Miami Worldcenter. “The resulting Citadel effect is attracting more businesses and wealth to Miami, driving pockets of the real-estate market and fueling philanthropic giving.”

Griffin, 55, was born in Daytona Beach, Fla. He founded Citadel in 1990, marking the beginning of his meteoric rise in the financial world. His firm now has about $58 billion in assets, making it one of the world’s biggest hedge-fund managers.

Citadel will have a temporary space inside 830 Brickell, the building in the center that is still under construction. Page 2 He made world headlines after he paid more than $100 million for a 12-bedroom estate in Miami’s Coconut Grove, a record price for the city. The estate, which includes 25,000 square feet of living space, was part of Griffin’s recent South Florida residential real-estate shopping spree, where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars.

Shortly before announcing his move in 2022, Griffin quietly acquired a 2.5-acre waterfront lot on Brickell Bay, according to public documents, to serve as a base for his new office. He paid $363 million, a Miami record of $3,340 a square foot. Griffin tapped Sterling Bay as the developer for his new headquarters. The Chicago-based firm had built offices in the Windy City for McDonald’s and Google. With the latter, it helped transform the surrounding neighborhood from a meatpacking area into a tech hub.

“Sterling Bay is a leader in designing beautiful, state-of-the art buildings to meet the needs of the modern workforce,” Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Citadel, told Bloomberg in 2022.

But Griffin had a change of heart and worried that Sterling Bay couldn’t get the project across the finish line, said a person familiar with Griffin’s thinking. Citadel cut ties with Sterling Bay in April last year. Griffin told the Journal at the time he was looking for an international developer with more experience working in South Florida.

The reversal was somewhat of a mystery to members of the Miami real-estate community. Sterling Bay isn’t commenting, and even employees working on the project were blindsided by his decision to end the partnership, according to people familiar with the matter. With the fate of its future headquarters still being worked out, Citadel hired Paul Darrah from Alphabet’s Google to head the company’s real-estate efforts as chief workplace officer. Darrah, who started last month, was instrumental in developing Google’s Manhattan corporate campus at St. John’s terminal.

The new CWO said he is preparing a temporary space for the firm inside 830 Brickell, a class A office building in downtown Miami that is under construction and delayed. The 130,000 square-foot space will take up six floors and will enable Darrah to experiment with what Citadel’s ultimate headquarters should look like, he said. The lease allows Citadel to stay in the space for up to nine years as they work out what Griffin’s headquarters will ultimately incorporate. His Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the world, will also be in the new Miami headquarters alongside the hedge fund.

Griffin, meanwhile, faces challenges to his real-estate ambitions. In addition to the initial waterfront lot he purchased, Griffin has acquired several pieces of contiguous land, including a large lot that spans a city block and houses a recently renovated office tower. He demolished one small apartment complex on one of the lots, and has done environmental testing on the main headquarters site. But at the center of the assemblage sits a more than 20-story condo building, which could complicate Citadel’s efforts to take control of the area.

This article has been sourced from The Wall Street Journal. You can read the full article here.