Owners of controversial private school sell waterfront Miami Beach estate for $26M

UPDATED, March 28, 8:20 p.m.: David and Leila Centner’s Centner Development sold a newly built waterfront mansion in Miami Beach for $26 million.

The Centners, the controversial owners of a private school in the Miami Design District, sold the estate at 5465 Pine Tree Drive to Nicholas and Susan Maounis, property records show. Nicholas Maounis founded Amaranth Advisors hedge fund and is CEO of Greenwich, Connecticut-based Verition Fund Management.

The 11,000-square-foot, 10-bedroom, 14-bathroom mansion was completed earlier this year. Centner Development hired builder Andrea D’Alessio of The Inspirata Group to build the estate, according to a press release. D’Alessio, who is also an agent with RE/MAX 360 Real Estate, was the listing agent. Ryan Mendell with Maxwell E. Realty represented the buyers.

Mendell declined to comment. D’Alessio could not be reached for comment.

A spokesperson for the Centners said the couple originally planned to develop the property into their personal residence. It hit the market in September for nearly $30 million.

The Centners paid $8 million for the half-acre lot in 2017, property records show. It has about 125 feet of water frontage, a dock and new seawall.

The property now includes a gym, media room, elevator, a 2,000-square-foot pool, three-story pool tower, and 2,000 square feet of balconies and mirandas, according to the release.

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The Centners paid $28.3 million for a waterfront home on Miami Beach’s Palm Island in August. About the same time, they sold two waterfront properties also on Pine Tree Drive to Russell Weiner, the billionaire founder of Rockstar Energy Drink, for more than $35 million.

The Centners received national media coverage when they threatened to fire teachers at their Centner Academy if they received a Covid-19 vaccine before the end of the 2021 school year, the New York Times and other news outlets reported.

The school also required students who received the vaccine to quarantine for 30 days, but ended up walking back on that decision, according to Local 10. For its anti-vax reasoning, the school cited false information about vaccines which has been debunked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.