Ken Griffin agreed to sell 125 Worth Avenue, a three-story office and retail building in Palm Beach, to Blackstone Real Estate’s Revantage platform for $86 million in an all-cash deal, Commercial Observer reported this week. Griffin bought the roughly 50,000-square-foot property in 2023 for $83 million from Frisbie Group and Dreyfuss Management, meaning the sale nets him a modest gain, working out to $1,720 per square foot. Blackstone principal Elena Clarfield cited Palm Beach’s scarce, high-performing luxury retail fundamentals as the draw, and the firm plans to renovate both the retail and office components. It’s Griffin’s second Worth Avenue exit in under a year: he sold the neighboring 151 Worth Avenue, which he’d bought for $78 million in 2022, to the family of GoldenTree Asset Management financier Steven Tananbaum last November.
Taken in isolation, that pattern, buying, then selling within a few years, could read as Griffin stepping back from real estate or simply booking a win on a well-timed retail bet. It looks completely different set against what he’s doing simultaneously in New York and Miami, where he’s not selling anything, he’s personally financing and co-developing two of the largest office towers under construction in the country.
In Manhattan, Griffin holds a 60% stake in a joint venture with Vornado Realty Trust (36%) and the Rudin family (4%) to build a roughly 1.9-million-square-foot, 62-story supertall at 350 Park Avenue, replacing the existing building on the site, where demolition is already underway. The project carries a total budget of about $6.2 billion, and Vornado CEO Steven Roth told analysts in early August that the partners have a $3.3 billion construction loan “ready to go,” which Roth said would likely be the largest single-building construction loan in New York City history. Citadel and Citadel Securities, Griffin’s hedge fund and market-making businesses, have signed a 15-year lease for roughly 1.05 million square feet to serve as their new headquarters, an anchor commitment unusual enough that Roth noted most trophy developments break ground without one. Griffin personally provided a $400 million bridge loan to the project in March, and he holds an option to buy the site outright for $1.4 billion and cut his partners out entirely, an option the project’s continued momentum suggests he’s unlikely to exercise. The partners are also weighing selling a roughly 25% stake in the venture to bring in additional capital…