Pharma mogul Charles Stiefel buys Coconut Grove penthouse

Majority family-owned Stiefel Laboratories sold to GlaxoSmithKline for nearly $3B in 2009

Charles and Daneen Stiefel with One Park Grove (Getty)
Charles and Daneen Stiefel with One Park Grove (Getty)

Charles Stiefel, whose majority family-owned Stiefel Laboratories sold to GlaxoSmithKline a decade ago for nearly $3 billion, picked up a penthouse in Coconut Grove.

Property records show the development entity for Terra and the Related Group’s Park Grove sold penthouse B at One Park Grove to Winfield Girl Holdings LLC, a Raleigh, North Caroline-based LLC that lists Charles and Daneen Stiefel’s home address in Raleigh.

The penthouse at the 20-story, 71-unit One Park Grove, at 2701 South Bayshore Drive, sold for $8.4 million.

Charles Stiefel was chairman and CEO of Stiefel Laboratories, which specialized in dermatological products, when the company sold to pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in 2009 for $2.9 billion.

The couple closed on the unit a month after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Charles Stiefel and Stiefel Enterprises were ordered to pay $37 million to shareholders. Stiefel allegedly defrauded shareholders, who were mostly company employees, by having the company buy back shareholders’ stock at “severely undervalued prices” without disclosing the pending sale to GlaxoSmithKline, according to the SEC. Charles Stiefel, without admitting or denying the allegations, was ordered to pay nearly $10.5 million.

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Stiefel’s new Coconut Grove condo is part of Related and Terra’s three-tower, 297-unit development. One Park Grove is the third and final tower of the Park Grove project that includes Two Park Grove and the Club Residences.

Last year, billionaire and health care mogul Mike Fernandez flipped a penthouse at Two Park Grove for $6.58 million, after buying it in late 2018 for $6.44 million.

In 2018, the developers closed on about $96 million in construction financing for One Park Grove from Bank of the Ozarks. The tower was also financed with a $16 million loan from Fifth Third Bank in 2015.

Units range from about 3,700 square feet to 7,500 square feet, with prices starting at $4 million. The Park Grove development, designed by Rem Koolhaas, features a gym, spa, sauna and steam rooms and a wine tasting room, as well as a Michael Schwartz restaurant.

Terra and Related paid $55 million for the 5.2-acre site in 2013, which included the Coconut Grove Bank headquarters.