Where living is a pleasure? Former Publix CEO pays $6.1M for Surf Club unit

Buyer is a nephew of company founder George Jenkins

Four Season Residences at the Surf Club (Inset: Charles Jenkins Jr.)
Four Season Residences at the Surf Club (Inset: Charles Jenkins Jr.)

Former Publix Super Markets CEO Charles Jenkins Jr. just bought a condo at the Four Seasons Residences at The Surf Club, property records show.

Jenkins, now chairman emeritus of Publix, who lives in Lakeland, closed on unit N-1011 at the newly completed 9-acre Surf Club project at 9101 Collins Avenue in Surfside.

He is the son of former Publix chairman Charles Jenkins Sr. and nephew of company founder George Jenkins. He joined Publix in 1969 as the assistant to vice president of real estate Joe Blanton, and had a nearly four-decade career before joining its board in 2007.

In Surfside, Jenkins won’t be too far from a Publix — the Four Seasons is just half a mile north from one of his family’s stores.

Records show Fort Partners sold the condo under the entity SC Residences Condominiums LLC. The development includes a 72-room hotel, two 12-story residential towers, a private club, two restaurants, four swimming pools, cabanas, a gym, oceanside gardens and a park.

It was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier with Kobi Karp of Kobi Karp Architecture & Interior Design, and was built on the site of the former private beach club founded in 1930 by Henry Firestone Club and designed by Russell Pancoast.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Fort Partners paid $116 million for the site in 2012. Thirteen units have closed in Miami-Dade County records since the hotel held a grand opening in March.

Last week, telecommunications tycoon Rajendra Singh paid $6.8 million for a unit. The founder of Telcom Ventures and Digital Service Corp. signed with wife Neera and closed on unit N-715. Acclaimed architect Leo A. Daly III also recently paid about $6 million with his wife Grega G. Daly for unit 919.

In a previous interview with The Real Deal, Fort Partners CEO Nadim Ashi said condo units range in price from $3.4 million to $18 million, and in size from 1,400 square feet to more than 7,000 square feet. The average price per square foot is about $2,400, according to Ashi.

Other unit owners include Todd Green, a senior managing director and portfolio manager with First Manhattan, who paid $12.4 million for unit N-721.

A number of new luxury condominium towers are in the works in Surfside, including the recently completed 12-story, 58-unit Fendi Chateau Residences and Jason Halpern’s planned luxury 36-unit boutique condo Surf House. ASRR Capital’s Arte by Antonio Citterio, which is just a block away from the Surf Club, signed off on a $90 million construction loan from Bank Leumi USA in March.