Aerospace heir buys waterfront Jupiter estate for $14M
Sellers downsized to $4.5M Jupiter Inlet Colony home
An heir to an aviation fortune bought a waterfront estate in Jupiter’s Admirals Cove for $13.8 million.
Records show John M. Purdy Jr. bought the house at 199 Commodore Drive from Frank and Janet Scarpa.
Rob Thomson of Waterfront Properties & Club Communities represented both the buyer and sellers in the deal.
Purdy, who goes by Jack, is the son of John M. Purdy Sr. and Winifred Purdy. The family’s Manchester, Connecticut-based company, Purdy Corporation, supplied helicopter parts to military and commercial aviation customers, Crunchbase shows.
Jack Purdy abruptly left his post as president of Purdy Corporation in 1995, when he was indicted in a kickback scheme. The U.S. District Court in New Haven found Purdy guilty of orchestrating the bribery scheme and inflating helicopter part prices for a client, Sikorsky Aircraft, in 1996, the Journal Inquirer reported.
He was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $250,000. North Canton, Ohio-based Timken Company bought Purdy Corporation for $200 million in 2007, according to Crunchbase.
The Scarpas bought the Admirals Cove home for $1.8 million in 1994, property records show. Spanning 0.8-acres, the property includes a 5,600-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom main house built in 1988, records show. The property also has a one-bedroom guest house, 300 feet of water frontage, and a pool, according to the listing.
Records show the Scarpas downsized to a 3,700-square-foot non-waterfront home in Jupiter Inlet Colony that they bought for $4.5 million this month.
Jupiter, in north Palm Beach County, is home to luxury gated communities that proved popular during South Florida’s pandemic-fueled real estate gold rush. Admirals Cove is among those communities attracting big names and titans of industry as buyers, including Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle.
An aviation founder sold his waterfront Admirals Cove home for $11 million in December. A New York-based real estate services chief bought a home for $9 million in October. In September, billionaire Ronald Clarke paid $15.7 million for the mansion adjacent to an Admirals Cove home that he has owned since 2007.