Shoe magnate sells waterfront Coral Gables estate to spec developers for $22M

A shoe magnate sold his waterfront Coral Gables estate to spec developers for $22 million.

Records show Carlos and Claire Musso sold the Gables Estates house at 480 Casuarina Concourse to a Florida entity named for the address. Local architect Cesar Molina of CMA Designs signed the deed for the buyers.

Maurice Boschetti of Boschetti Realty Group represented both sides of the off-market deal. The buyers are a group of investors who plan to build a 14,000-square-foot spec mansion and list it for more than $60 million, Boschetti said. The mansion will have a theater, gym, spa and tennis court. Molina will lead the project, and Boschetti will have the listing, he confirmed. 

If sold for that price, the estate would mark a record for properties in the luxury gated Gables Estates neighborhood. 

“We’re gonna hit $60 million,” he said. “Everyone’s like … We’ve never seen that before.”

Boschetti said the buyer will be a high net worth individual looking to avoid the hassle of building an estate themself.

“We know Citadel is coming down, we know Microsoft is coming down,” he said. “[The executives] are going to want to live in either Coral Gables or Coconut Grove in a gated community.”

The seller, Carlos Musso, co-founded Unisa, a shoe brand based in Alicante, Spain, in 1970. Marc Fisher, the son of Nine West founder Jerome Fisher, added the brand to his namesake portfolio of footwear companies after launching it in 2003, according to published reports. 

Musso also has ties to Palm Beach society. His mother, Lourdes Aspuru Musso, was one of the three Aspuru sisters who had fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba and owned Salon Francais on Palm Beach’s Via Mizner in the 1960s, according to the Palm Beach Post. Musso’s aunt, Julia Aspuru Amory, was the first wife of Enrique Rousseau, who next married Lilly Pulitzer. Amory later married Charles Amory, whose mother, Gladys Munn Pulitzer, was Lilly Pulitzer’s mother-in-law. 

Records show Carlos Musso bought a home on the island for $2.9 million in 2016.

Musso and his ex-wife, Lucia Nielsen, bought the Casuarina Concourse home in Gables Estates for $1.2 million in 1988, records show. The deed was transferred to him in 1994. The property spans 1.7 acres, and includes a nearly 7,000-square-foot home, pool and dock, according to property records. 

Boschetti said the developers could start demolition and construction as soon as this summer, depending on the permitting process. 

In another Gables Estates sale this month, Bird co-founder Travis VanderZanden sold his waterfront estate for $26 million. In August, a waterfront teardown sold for $36 million.