Trending

Meet Ken Griffin’s platoon of planners and professionals building his business in South Florida 

Citadel’s founder is relying on a team of plugged-in players to get approvals for his firm’s new HQ in Brickell

Ken Griffin (Photo-illustration by Paul Dilakian/The Real Deal)
Ken Griffin (Photo-illustration by Paul Dilakian/The Real Deal)

In less than three years, billionaire Ken Griffin has turned into one of South Florida’s biggest real estate tycoons. 

The Daytona Beach native with a net worth of $43.8 billion, per Forbes, moved his hedge fund Citadel and its sister financial services firm Citadel Securities to the Magic City from Chicago in 2022.  Griffin has since amassed a residential and commercial real estate portfolio in the region worth more than $1 billion.

The commercial properties are a 4.2-acre assemblage in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood where Griffin is planning Citadel’s new headquarters, which will cost more than $1 billion to build, and a pair of office buildings in downtown Palm Beach where some of his firm’s executives have resettled. Recently, Griffin tapped New York-based Related Companies to co-develop his new corporate HQ. 

On the residential side, Griffin’s acquisitions include his Miami record-setting $107 million purchase of a Coconut Grove estate whose previous owner is philanthropist Adrienne Arsht, as well as a combined $157.5 million for a 6.5-acre waterfront assemblage on Miami Beach’s Star Island

He is not going it alone. Griffin and Citadel are relying on a cadre of plugged-in players to broker deals, obtain planning and zoning approvals and lobby public officials. Most of the professionals working on Citadel’s behalf contacted by The Real Deal either did not respond to interview requests or declined comment because they had not received authorization from their client.  

“He understood the concept of buying multiple properties in prime locations [in Miami], and that was before everyone jumped on the train.”
Jill Hertzberg the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker

But other sources help paint the picture of Griffin’s operations. He is quick to make a decision when it comes to buying real estate, they say. He’ll visit a property in person, though maybe just once. He consults with a team of advisers who work directly for him, not Citadel. Not one to just follow the market, Griffin creates value in the places where he invests, sources who have worked with him told TRD. His network is by no means fixed, and the new partnership with Related is changing his relationships with some of the players below, who have recently parted ways with Citadel.

The 56-year-old is arguably the biggest and one of the first out-of-state (though a Floridian by birth, he’s more closely connected to Illinois) corporate titans to capitalize on South Florida’s real estate momentum during the pandemic by investing early in the region’s hottest submarkets, Jill Hertzberg of the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker, said. 

Hertzberg has represented Griffin in some of his Miami-area residential purchases, including when he bought Arsht’s former Coconut Grove estate. “He’s one of the most astute buyers I’ve ever worked with,” Hertzberg said. “He understood the concept of buying multiple properties in prime locations [in Miami], and that was before everyone jumped on the train.”

Through a spokesperson, Citadel declined interview requests and to comment. 

Using lobbyist registration records and previously published reports, TRD has compiled brief dossiers about the individuals getting paid by Citadel for assisting Griffin in shaping his South Florida real estate empire:

Mario Borda
CEO at Borda Commercial Real Estate

Citadel won’t comment as to whether Borda, who specializes in condo buyouts, is on the payroll. Borda did not respond to requests for comment, but there are a few breadcrumbs suggesting he may be secretly working on a possible takeover of an older condominium building across the street from the firm’s new planned HQ development site. Between 2002 and last year, dozens of similarly named Delaware entities listing the same mailing address as Borda have scooped up nearly half of the units in the Solaris at Brickell Bay, a 22-story high-rise with 141 condos. The building abuts two separate parcels that make up the 4.2 acres owned by Citadel. The buyers have paid between $500,000 to $750,000 for individual units, property records show.

Norman Foster 
Founder of Foster + Partners

For the design of Citadel’s new waterfront home, Griffin tapped starchitect Norman Foster and his Pritzker Prize-winning firm. During a career spanning seven decades, Foster has designed landmark office buildings for corporate giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Bloomberg and Hyundai. Foster + Partners’ best-known work includes Apple’s ring-shaped headquarters in Cupertino, California, Hearst Tower in Manhattan and the glass replacement dome on the Reichstag building in Berlin. Renderings for the Citadel project show the concept: an all-glass tower that tapers as it rises to the top. The 55-story skyscraper’s first 34 floors will have 1.3 million square feet of office space and the uppermost floors will house 212 hotel rooms. At a recent local government conference in Coral Gables, Griffin bragged that the future Citadel high-rise will be an “iconic building not just in Miami, but in the world.” He added: “The minute you set foot in that building, you will realize that you are in some place that is extraordinarily competitive with the best of London [and] New York.” 

John Gattuso 
CEO of Gattuso Development Partners

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Citadel is not in the construction business, so Griffin originally turned to Gattuso’s firm as a consultant on its new HQ project after canceling a co-developer agreement with Chicago-based Sterling Bay. Since forming his company in 2018, Gattuso has focused on developing luxury office space, life sciences buildings and manufacturing facilities, primarily in Philadelphia. The firm and New York-based Vigilant Holdings are currently building a $450 million life sciences building at Drexel University. Gattuso was dipping his toes into South Florida for the first time working on the Citadel project, but after Related came on board he is no longer involved.

Nick Iarossi 
Founding partner at Capital City Consulting

To protect Citadel’s South Florida interests in the state capitol, Griffin has turned to Iarossi to bend the ear of Tallahassee legislators and Gov. Ron DeSantis. Iarossi is among the governor’s biggest fundraisers and has served on DeSantis’ inaugural committees. In 2023, Citadel retained the government affairs lawyer and his Capital Consulting lobbying corps to persuade lawmakers to carve out an exception in a new law prohibiting citizens of seven nations, including China and Venezuela, from buying property anywhere in South Florida, even if they had work permits. The exception allows foreign employees with U.S. visas and their significant others the ability to purchase a single property in Miami that is not within a five-mile radius of a military base. The law applies to a handful of Citadel employees who hail from China and other countries on the list. 

Neisen Kasdin 
Co-office managing partner at Akerman law firm

Kasdin is the tip of the spear in obtaining the regulatory greenlight for Citadel’s future HQ, which will require approvals from Miami-Dade County and the Federal Aviation Administration. Kasdin and his land-use team are experienced in successfully getting massive projects greenlit. They represented Swire Properties in obtaining city of Miami approvals for Brickell City Centre, a $1.5 billion mixed-use project in Brickell spanning 5.5 million square feet of condos, hotel rooms, office space and luxury retail spaces. Prior to becoming a prominent South Florida planning and zoning lawyer, Kasdin dabbled in politics, which comes in handy when he’s meeting local elected officials. He served on the Miami Beach City Commission for a decade, including a four-year stint as mayor between 1997 and 2001. During his tenure, Miami Beach experienced a wave of condo development, including construction of the first phase of Bruce Eichner’s Continuum on South Beach condo complex. 

Brian May 
Partner at Capital City Consulting

With a client roster headlined by Stephen Ross, the billionaire developer and owner of the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise, May is known for his lobbying work behind the scenes, meeting with county staff and making the rounds with elected officials when a project is coming up for a vote. Following stints in the early 1990s working for then-Florida Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson and then-Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, May took a career detour into government relations work that now spans more than two decades. May played an instrumental role in securing tens of millions of dollars in county grants for Ross’ Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens tied to the venue hosting sporting events such as an annual Formula 1 race and a World Cup 2026 match. Other builders who have put May on their payroll include 13th Floor Investments, Related Group, Terra, Hyatt Hotel Corp. and Grass River Properties. 

John Tombari
Development director at Citadel

In 2023, Citadel brought in Tombari as the firm’s in-house construction manager to oversee development of the new HQ, according to his LinkedIn profile, but he recently departed. Previously, from 2014 to 2020, Tombari worked as a senior director of project management at CBRE, overseeing the brokerage’s Google account in California. His career includes stints overseeing construction projects for Blockbuster Video, AutoNation, Washington Mutual Bank, Bank of America, CitiBank and Papa John’s Pizza.

Residential brokers

In Miami Beach and Palm Beach, Griffin has worked with a handful of agents over the years in addition to Hertzberg. In 2015, Griffin’s $60 million purchase of a penthouse and a lower-level unit at Alan Faena and Len Blavatnik’s Faena House tower in Miami Beach caused a frenzy because the deal reportedly set a record at the time. Jeff Miller, then an agent with Brown Harris Stevens Zilbert, represented Griffin a decade ago when he acquired the units. 

In 2020, when Griffin sold both Faena House condos at a loss, he was represented by Ryan Mendell of Maxwell E. Realty. The same year, Hertzberg represented Griffin in acquiring his first waterfront lot on Miami Beach’s Star Island. He has since acquired seven more contiguous lots, and Hertzberg has also represented him in a few of those deals. It mirrored Griffin’s acquisition strategy in Palm Beach, which began around 2012. Griffin spent at least $450 million acquiring land on the exclusive island, where he is building a massive estate. Many of those deals were brokered by Lawrence Moens, a top Palm Beach broker who never speaks to the press and has not been photographed publicly.

Recommended For You