Amazon Looking for More Miami-Dade Office Space

Amazon.com is hunting for more office space in Miami-Dade County.

The e-commerce giant is seeking about 50,000 square feet, Bloomberg reported. Its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos recently announced he plans to relocate to Miami from the Seattle area, months after buying a waterfront home in Indian Creek Village.

Recently, Bezos purchased an adjacent mansion in the exclusive enclave, and is expected to redevelop the properties into a larger estate. He spent nearly $150 million on the two homes.

Amazon had been looking for additional office space even before Bezos’ announcement in early November, a spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg. Amazon has about 400 employees in the Miami area, but has not yet signed a direct lease.

Bezos, who graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School in 1982, is the third richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of about $169 billion, according to Forbes. Though he is the wealthiest person to move to South Florida in recent years, he is not the only billionaire to do so.

Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager worth about $35 billion, moved his family and his companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities, to Miami from Chicago. He plans to develop a waterfront skyscraper in Brickell, where the companies’ new headquarters will be.

Griffin recently said that Miami could unseat New York as the finance capital of the world.

“We’ll see how big Wall Street South becomes,” Griffin told Bloomberg News at the Citadel Securities Global Macro Conference in Miami. “Maybe in 50 years it will be Brickell Bay North how we refer to New York in finance.”

South Florida became a magnet for financial firms in recent years, in part due to the lack of a state income tax and overall business-friendly environment.

— Katherine Kallergis