Ken Griffin Snapped Up an Entire Miami Apartment Building

Ken Griffin has made some of the biggest real estate deals in the United States, amassing a property portfolio valued at more than $1.5 billion. His latest acquisition, however, may be his most audacious yet.

Over the past three years, the billionaire founder of Citadel quietly bought every one of the 138 condos—along with the ground-floor retail spaces—that make up Solaris, a 22-story tower in Miami‘s Brickell neighborhood. According to Bloomberg, Griffin used a network of anonymous LLCs to assemble the roughly $125 million deal one apartment at a time, ultimately securing one of the last remaining sites needed to expand his hedge fund’s Miami headquarters.

The building will be demolished to make way for the next phase of Griffin’s massive development, including a 54-story skyscraper for Citadel, a 300-unit apartment building, a 1,420-space parking garage, and additional office space—further cementing the billionaire’s long-term bet on Miami. 

The Miami site where Griffin is developing a 54-story tower that will serve as the Citadel HQ.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buying out the building wasn’t easy. Bloomberg reports Griffin’s team spent years negotiating with individual owners, repeatedly raising its offers and even letting some residents stay in their apartments temporarily through below-market leaseback agreements. As word spread that a mystery buyer was quietly snapping up units, some of the last holdouts reportedly walked away with seven-figure payouts, while earlier sellers later said they wished they’d held out longer.

Even after buying the entire building, Griffin still needed one final piece of the puzzle: a city-owned historic cottage that once served as the office of Miami’s first physician. That hurdle disappeared last month when Miami commissioners reportedly approved the sale of the property to a Griffin-affiliated entity. As part of the deal, Griffin agreed to pay for the preservation and relocation of the century-old building while working with the Dade Heritage Trust on its future.

Since relocating Citadel from Chicago in 2022, the notoriously intense investor has poured more than $1 billion into South Florida real estate, repeatedly arguing that the city is poised to become a major financial hub.

The Solaris deal follows a familiar Griffin playbook. Rather than simply buying a marquee home, he often spends years assembling neighboring properties into much larger estates and development sites. From Palm Beach and Miami’s Star Island to Aspen, Southampton, Hawaii, London, and Saint-Tropez, the billionaire has repeated the same formula—one that a growing number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals are now embracing: assembling neighboring properties into ever-larger holdings.

Authors

Abby Montanez

Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, entertainment, dining, travel to…

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