Russian businessman Ilya Karpov bought a waterfront Miami Beach lot for $20.8 million.
Karpov purchased the 0.6-acre property at 2740 North Bay Road from Delphine Dray, who owns the National Hotel in Miami Beach, according to records.
A rendering of 2740 North Bay Road in Miami Beach (Pacheco Martinez & Associates)
The site once held a two-story, light brown, barrel-tile roofed house that the city had deemed historic. In 2018, the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board approved the Dray family’s application to demolish the house and rebuild it anew by replicating the older home, city records show. The plan was to build a 10,744-square-foot, two-story mansion.
The site remains vacant.
A rendering of 2740 North Bay Road in Miami Beach (Pacheco Martinez & Associates)
Delphine is the daughter of the late Claude Dray, a billionaire hotel developer and art collector in France, and Simone Dray. Claude Dray was fatally shot in his Paris apartment in 2011.
He purchased the North Bay Road home in 2004 for $4 million, and the property was transferred to Simone Dray in 2011, property records show. Delphine Dray bought it from her mother in December for $6.4 million.
Karpov is a former general director at the OGO Group, which was once one of Russia’s largest grain producers. He sold his stake in the company over a decade ago, moving to Miami Beach where he has invested in residential real estate, The Real Deal has reported.
In 2019, Karpov sold the waterfront spec house at 38 South Hibiscus Drive on Miami Beach’s Hibiscus Island for $14.2 million.
Among his earlier investments, he bought a house at 19 Palm Avenue on Miami Beach’s Palm Island for $4.5 million in 2007, and sold it seven years later for $6.5 million, TRD has reported.
Miami Beach, a mecca for waterfront estates, has a stock of aging houses that developers and investors target to build spec homes.
In October, Douglas Elliman agent Oliver Lloyd and his wife, Laurie, paid $11.2 million for teardown at 2700 Sunset Drive in Miami Beach, tapping Todd Michael Glaser to build a 9,000-square-foot mansion on the site.
Also, David and Leila Centner’s Centner Development paid $8 million for the lot at 5465 Pine Tree Drive in 2017, and then hired Andrea D’Alessio of The Inspirata Group to build a 10-bedroom estate. Centner Development sold the mansion in March for $26 million.
David and Leila Centner are the owners of controversial private school Centner Academy in the Miami Design District.