Citadel Reveals How Much Of Its $2.5B Miami HQ It Plans To Occupy
Citadel is planning to open one of Miami's largest corporate headquarters in a tower being developed by its founder and CEO, billionaire Ken Griffin.
The hedge fund and its sister market-making business, Citadel Securities, plan to take a third, or roughly 561K SF, of a 1.7M SF office tower in Brickell, where site work is already underway, Citadel Chief Workplace Officer Paul Darrah said at Bisnow's South Florida Office Summit on Thursday.
The company, which broke ground on the Miami headquarters in March and is in the deep soil-mixing process, plans to go vertical by the fourth quarter of this year, Darrah told Bisnow after the panel.
"There's continued to be momentum and migration here, which is exciting, and it's all of the support services that ensure our success," Darrah said onstage at the event, held at the Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables.
"We're bullish on the market," he added.
The firm's headquarters is currently based in 830 Brickell, with roughly 500 employees.
Citadel tapped Related Cos. as its development partner on the $2.5B project — which Griffin said "will be an iconic building in the world" — at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. The company last month scrapped a planned hotel component of the tower, which would have taken more than 400K SF in the building with 212 rooms, Commercial Observer reported.
The hedge fund had been considering taking between 300K SF and 400K SF in the tower, so the decision to take more than 550K SF represents a significant expansion.
Citadel is still considering a hotel component across the street from the office, Bloomberg reported, citing Miami-Dade County filings from last month. The hedge fund also updated its plans with a proposal to build a 300-unit apartment building and a 1,420-space parking garage on land Griffin owns nearby.
Griffin paid $360M in 2022 for the site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive and $286.5M for a 28-story office building across the street. He has bought out all of the units of the Solaris condo building that sits between the existing office building and the site of the upcoming HQ and plans to demolish it, Bloomberg reported.
The Miami expansion comes amid tension between Griffin and the mayor of New York City, where Griffin plans to partner with Vornado Realty Trust to build a $6B tower on Park Avenue to house Citadel's NYC operations.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called Griffin out directly in a viral April video, highlighting his record-breaking Manhattan condo to promote the city's new “pied-á-terre tax” on second homes worth more than $5M. Griffin said last month the video put him in harm's way and made him rethink his commitment to the city.
“We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision here with respect to his posting of that video,” Griffin said on CNBC.
Despite one of his deputies raising doubts that Citadel would go forward with the tower at 350 Park Ave., Griffin said the hedge fund would still “probably go through with” the project.
Griffin, who grew up in Boca Raton, is worth more than $50B and is the world’s 37th-wealthiest person, according to Forbes.
His decision to relocate the company’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami came during the pandemic, when Citadel opened a temporary workspace in Palm Beach. By 2024, the company had taken eight floors at 830 Brickell and announced plans for a newly constructed headquarters.
Griffin also leased the penthouse at 830 Brickell for private office space, Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Andrew Trench, who is on the building's leasing team, said at Bisnow's event.
“We see Miami as a big growth opportunity for us, but we also see it as a big growth opportunity for the industry,” Darrah said.
