From the April magazine: The big short is getting a lot taller. Billionaire real estate mogul Jeff Greene made hundreds of millions of dollars betting against subprime mortgage-backed securities before the last financial crisis hit. He now owns more than 75 acres of prime land in West Palm Beach — a city poised for major growth — with plans to build several new high-rises there.
“People talk about disruption in various industries, like what Amazon is doing in retail,” the 61-year-old investor and developer told The Real Deal from his desk in a former post office on North County Road. “I think it’s very easy to disrupt West Palm Beach.”
Greene is now working to bring thousands of residential units, a hotel, a 30-story office building, a raft of retail space and even a new school to the South Florida city with more than 100,000 residents and plenty of affluence in and around it. [More]