Billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin has sold one of his many lucrative Star Island lots to former baseball star turned real estate investor Alex Rodriguez, The Real Deal has learned.
Griffin, the founder and CEO of Chicago-based Citadel, sold the lot at 14 Star Island Drive to Rodriguez, according to a source familiar with the deal. It’s unclear what the ex-Yankee paid for the nearly 1-acre lot. Griffin acquired the property in August 2020 for $24 million, but it was recently appraised at $44 million, the source said.
Rodriguez, chairman and CEO of Miami-based A-Rod Corp., plans to hire a world-renowned architect to design a 20,000-square-foot mansion on the lot. Rodriguez could sell it as a spec home, the source said.
A spokesperson for Rodriguez declined to comment. Griffin’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Griffin has amassed a large and valuable real estate portfolio in South Florida, including several properties on Star Island, an exclusive gated community where other owners include Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Philip and Patricia Frost, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Lennar Corporation executive chairman Stuart Miller, billionaire LoanDepot founder and CEO Anthony Hsieh and plastic surgeon Leonard Hochstein, also known as the “Boob God.”
Griffin’s purchases include paying $75 million for 8/9 Star Island Drive late last year; $25 million for 10 Star Island Drive around the same time; and $37 million for 11 and 12 Star Island Drive in August of last year. Sources also pegged Griffin as the buyer behind the $32.5 million purchase of 13 Star Island Drive, which had been linked to Rodriguez and his then-fiancée Jennifer Lopez, also in August of last year.
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Ultra luxury waterfront homes in Miami-Dade have a new benchmark following Griffin’s $107 million purchase of Adrienne Arscht’s Coconut Grove estate in September, which set a record for the priciest-ever single-family home purchase in Miami-Dade County.
If Rodriguez were to develop the Star Island property as a spec mansion, he could list it for well over $100 million. Nearby at 27 Star Island Drive, John Jansheski, the founder of DenTek whose father reportedly invented the at-home dental pick, recently re-listed his property for $77 million with his ex-wife, Alyssa Morgan of the Side-backed brokerage The Inside Network and Oren Alexander of Official, which is also backed by Side.
In addition to being a 14-time Major League Baseball All-Star, Rodriguez is a co-owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and leads Slam Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, as CEO alongside equal partner Himanshu Gulati, chairman of Antara Capital. In late 2020, Rodriguez’s A-Rod Corp. joint ventured with Adi Chugh of Maverick Commercial Properties to invest in CGI Merchant Group’s $650 million Hospitality Opportunity Fund, which bought the lease on the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. for $375 million.