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Resi roundup: Insurance heir, Halloween honcho and Madoff victims close deals
Sales spanned from Coconut Grove to Palm Beach between $7.5M and $9M
South Florida luxury deals are still closing despite the holiday lull.
In the latest roundup of residential sales in the tri-county region, the daughters of one of Bernie Madoff’s Big Four clients sold their late parents’ Palm Beach condo. Other deals ahead of the new year include purchases by a Halloween costume honcho and the wife of an insurance heir.
Coconut Grove
In Coconut Grove, the wife of a Progressive Insurance heir bought a condo in One Park Grove for $8.3 million.
Records show Jan Rowse Lewis bought unit 6A in the condominium at 2811 South Bayshore Drive from Coconut Grove Skies, a Florida entity managed by Alvaro Villegas.
Adriana Pinto Torres and Tracy Ferrer of Douglas Elliman had the listing, and Lourdes Alatriste, another Elliman agent, brought the buyer.
Jan’s husband is Dan Lewis, the son of Progressive co-founder Joseph M. Lewis. His late brother, Peter B. Lewis was the company’s chairman and CEO for 35 years, up until his death in 2013. Jan and Dan Lewis moved to South Florida in 1999, and have since been regular investors in the area’s luxury real estate.
In 2016, they bought a unit in the Grove at Grand Bay for $7.4 million. Records show they sold it at a loss in 2017 for $5.8 million. They own a waterfront lot on the Venetian Islands, which they bought in 2018 for $5.9 million.
The recently traded One Park Grove condo spans 3,250 square feet, four bedrooms, five bathrooms and one half-bathroom. Villegas bought the unit in 2020, the year it was completed, for $4.8 million, records show. A Redfin listing shows it listed for $8.5 million in October.
One Park Grove is one of three condominium towers in Park Grove, a 5-acre development led by Related Group and Terra. In July, former commercial brokerage head Dan Hughes sold his penthouse in Two Park Grove for $17.5 million.
Palm Beach
Up in Palm Beach, the daughters of Bernie Madoff client Carl Shapiro sold his Breakers Row condo for $9 million in an off-market deal. Records show Ellen S. Jaffe and Linda S. Waintrup sold unit C33 at 2 North Breakers Row to Alan Jay Kaufman.
Kaufman is chairman, president and CEO of H.W. Kaufman Financial Group, a Farmington Hills, Michigan-based financial services and insurance firm. Its portfolio of companies includes Burns & Wilcox.
Jaffe and Waintrup are the daughters of the late Ruth and Carl Shapiro, who founded the women’s clothing company Kay Windsor in 1939. Carl Shapiro was considered one of Bernie Madoff’s “Big Four” clients and Jaffe’s husband Robert Jaffe was the vice president of Cohmad Securities, a brokerage firm where Madoff was a partial owner.
The Shapiro family foundation reportedly lost $145 million in the crash of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and Carl Shapiro later agreed to forfeit $625 million to the U.S. Government to be paid out to victims.
The Breakers Row condo was built in 1986 and the Shapiros bought the unit for $1 million in 1987, records show.
Longtime Palm Beach accountant Richard Rampell and his wife, Ellen Rampell, bought a Breakers Row condo in May for $10.4 million.
Palm Beach Gardens
Further inland in Palm Beach Gardens, one of the nation’s largest producers of Halloween costumes bought a waterfront home in the gated Frenchman’s Creek community. Records show Marc and Phyllis Beige bought the house at 2763 Calais Drive from Randall and Dawn Burcham.
Lynn Bird of Illustrated Properties had the listing, and Joel Kaminester of Kaminester Realty Group brought the buyers.
Marc Beige is CEO of New York-based Rubie’s Costume Company, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of Halloween costumes.
Randall Burcham is a senior advisor for PolyQuest, a plastics company headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Burchams bought the Calais Drive home for $2.6 million in 2019, records show.
Built in 1993 on 0.6 acres, the 6,700-square-foot house has five bedrooms, seven bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, according to property records. The listing shows that the home was extensively renovated in 2020, and includes a pool, spa and dock with a 120-foot seawall.