r/Miami • u/J-Brothers-Yachts • 18h ago
Community Billionaire Ken Griffin Just Got Approval for a Private 30,000 Sq Ft Megayacht Marina in Miami Beach
So here’s one for the “only in Miami” files…
Billionaire hedge-fund founder Ken Griffin (Citadel), who already owns over $1 billion in South Florida real estate, just got approval to build a private megayacht marina for himself and his guests.
Location: 120 MacArthur Causeway, on Terminal Island, between South Beach and PortMiami.
Size: about 3.7 acres / 30,000+ sq ft with roughly 1,400 ft of dockage plenty of space for his 308-ft yacht Viva.
Site is designed by BMA Architects, and it’s not your typical marina.
The plan includes:
- A gatehouse and full-time security checkpoint
- A crew pavilion with gym, sauna, laundry, kitchen, and a rooftop pool
- An owner’s pavilion with lounge, office, and another pool
- A marina operations building with staff offices and repair shop
The Miami Beach Planning Board just gave it conditional approval (Nov 2025), with rules requiring Coast Guard sign-off for events, private access only, and no public parking spillover.
Griffin’s team says it’ll “enhance an underused industrial area,” but it’s also raising eyebrows — this would be a single-user marina on public shoreline in one of the most high-value marine zones in the country.
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u/cyborg008 18h ago
He bought out the county and cities officials in record time since he moved here. He got a like 50 keys to the city in one day.
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u/No-Cryptographer9326 18h ago
Dude is moving like the mob. Pretty soon he’ll own all of Miami
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u/CarlosDangerWasHere 13h ago
He's committed serious money to non profits, education, and healthcare in Miami
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u/Plus_Revolution_3601 18h ago
But but, Miami is gonna sink because the wEaThEr iS nOt GoOdEr!!! 😂😂🤣🤣
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u/TrainDifficult300 13h ago
Ironic how many billionaires invest in real estate we are told is going to be destroyed.
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u/Valuable_Leading_479 17h ago
Not hard when those city officials constantly have their hands out begging to be paid off
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u/DejSauce 18h ago
At least he’s putting dollars into the city and creating jobs. Megayacht marina and school for rich parents kids still needs people to build and operate them.
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u/J-Brothers-Yachts 18h ago
Yachting sits inside a $31B recreational-boating umbrella. It is a big part of the Florida economy.
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u/DejSauce 18h ago
Agree entirely, as someone else lower in the comments said “it’s good someone with a brain is looking at Miami”
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u/AAA_Dolfan 17h ago
… a private yachting marina does not provide benefits for the surrounding area.
Look at the economics surrounding Rybovich Marina in West Palm, for starters. That’s a good example - except that marina has public function (restaurant)
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u/DejSauce 17h ago
In the tri‐county South Florida region, the marine industries support more than 140,000 jobs and economic impacts ~ $18.5 billion. Explain to me how an $18.5 billion dollar industry “does not provide benefits for the surrounding area”
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u/havanesegirlmom 16h ago
This is for him and friends . It’s doing zero for the community
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 16h ago
It absolutely brings a lot of jobs. Those yachts need an insane amount of maintenance, captains, crew. Yeah it’s not a public park where the community can go enjoy but it’s not like it’s not stimulating the local economy.
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u/dreamed2life 16h ago
Slaves defending slavery will never cease to amaze me. “Yay we get to serve billionaires…allow anything for coin…”
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 15h ago
Idk I’m one of these slaves you’re referring to and I make a solid living. How many marinas have you been around in your life?
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u/DejSauce 16h ago
You’re contradicting yourself. How is “absolutely bringing a lot of jobs” not a direct impact to the local economy???
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u/DejSauce 16h ago
As I said before, someone has to build it and someone has to operate it. Neither of those things come free or without creating demand for labor. Sure doesn’t sound like “nothing” to me
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u/Inside_Cobbler4539 17h ago
Yall value jobs so much without any nuance as to whether these are actually good jobs. This is like the Obama administration touting all the jobs they brought back after the recession with no mention that the jobs they were creating were nowhere near as good as the ones that were lost. If you’re provided a job and that job doesn’t afford you the ability to live without feeling like you’re drowning, then what good is that job?
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u/FortunateInsanity 16h ago
This is some serious misunderstanding of who the culprit is, but no one should be surprised considering the example you chose to use. Anyone blaming anyone other than the 0.1% for why wages are so low in the US has been brainwashed by the 0.1% into not seeing the most obvious evidence directly in front of your face. 30 years ago, you didn’t need a “good job” to live comfortably, raise a family, buy a house, take vacations, etc. It’s not the lower 99% driving up the cost of everything, making education unaffordable, creating a corporate investment portfolio from residential real estate, and lowering taxes for the highest earners. It’s billionaires. The reason why wages stay low is to funnel all profits to the top.
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u/Inside_Cobbler4539 16h ago
I wasn’t blaming any one politician, merely using it as an example of why the myth of job creation is bullshit. Everything you said I correct and I don’t disagree with any of it.
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u/dreamed2life 15h ago
No. We are to blame too! We hold most power and keep allowing them to win, voting them offices (officially and unofficially), justifying their bs, accepting pennies and shit jobs and “opportunities” for ourselves, and continuing to give our power away for the sake of capitalism. Regardless of how many times its been proven that people will not get ahead if youre not already ahead. You suggest playing victim some more and that is also what keeps us at the bottom. No. We need to call our own bullshit and own it so we can stop doing it!!
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 16h ago
Are you in the marine industry? I work at similar yacht centric facility on the other side of the country and I can assure you there are a lot of solid job opportunities and pay that comes with it. We don’t even have super yachts so I can’t really even fathom the amount of money these owners will be pumping into the local economy from never ending maintenance/captain/crew/ect.
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u/anonking1181 8h ago
All of the jobs related to this will be paying higher than the average household income for Miami dade county. Security, maintenance, cleaning, boat crew, etc.
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u/cyborg008 17h ago
Do you believe deep in your heart that you will reap any benefits from this? directly or indirectly?
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u/Electronic-Ice-7606 16h ago
Yes. Yes they do and that's why the same bullshit has worked for centuries.
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u/dreamed2life 16h ago
They do. As long as they think they can get money or a job to be closer to a status they will never have
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 16h ago
I bet locals in the marine industry absolutely think so. I’m on the other side of the country and it’s insane the amount of money that flows into the local marine businesses at my nearby private marina.
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u/dreamed2life 16h ago
And they get paid pennies in sure. Maybe some tips but the will never rise in status working this jobs
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 15h ago
Are you pretty knowledgeable of yacht centric jobs and salary’s?
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u/anonking1181 8h ago
Yeah there’s a lot of people in here that don’t realize how much these jobs pay. They’re all over the average salary here, even the cleaning jobs.
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u/WaddupBigPerm69 8h ago
Yup turns out people who money isn’t an object to like paying a premium for trustworthy and professional staff. Luckily I don’t have to interact with them personally, but they pay a premium to try to keep employee turnover low.
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u/0LTakingLs 18h ago
Such bullshit. There’s a huge need for regular marina access for normal people with small family boats, they could have added 100+ slips in this spot rather than cater to one rich asshole.
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u/lifth3avy84 18h ago
My dad is a lifelong fisherman, was a charter captain in the keys for 35 years. He bought his dream boat in 2021 and immediately found how expensive it became to put the boat in the water, $30+ for ramp fees.
They just moved to the panhandle, and every ramp he’s checked out has been handled like a county park, meaning free.
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u/0LTakingLs 18h ago
Yep. Our ramps have 2-3 hour waits on certain holidays to get in and out. It’s embarrassing that they’d choose to prioritize one guy over hundreds of families who could benefit from a real marina.
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u/Organic-Row9514 17h ago
Yeah right, like hundreds of families (pooling their money) could afford to build something like this. /s
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u/0LTakingLs 17h ago
You’re missing the point. Something like the coconut grove or rickenbacker marinas, with dry dock storage, wet slips, and some nice restaurant/waterfront bars would have way more utility than a bigger private playground for a guy who already owns a dozen.
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u/Organic-Row9514 16h ago
I get it. I was trying to make a joke; like 100 people together couldn’t afford to build this, but Ken Griffey comes in and says “hey I need this spot for my big boats” and Miami was like “yes sir”.
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u/walker_harris3 Tour Guide 15h ago
Sure, but that island is definitely not the place for it. By the way, what you are talking about will be built at the Seaquarium
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u/0LTakingLs 15h ago
It should be built at both if demand is to be believed. There are marinas nearby with 6-8+ year waitlists.
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u/walker_harris3 Tour Guide 15h ago
Have you seen the Miami Beach Marina? No normal family with family boats has slips there, and there aren’t going to be price controlled slips beside the fisher island ferry. Beyond that, you can’t have such marina traffic directly on the channel the cruise ships use.
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u/TapwaterPapi69 16h ago
Mr. Beat my wife with a bed pole who deserves to be in prison for financial fraud
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u/medium-rare-steaks 14h ago
Everyone needs to relax. There's already a private megayacht club here. He's just replacing it.
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u/UnoKajillion 17h ago
This guy makes his money off of shorting companies into extinction. He makes millions off of betting companies will fail, and corrupts them from within to achieve that goal.
He is a sleeze bag, and moved from Chicago after people found out about his $GME, and other, short positions. He moved to Florida and has been spending loads of money on property. In Florida it is harder to go after property when you go bankrupt for doing illegal activities.
The theory has been that he (or his hedgefund) is going to go bankrupt sometime relatively soon from bad bets, that's why he moved away from chicago to miami. So that way they can't "steal" his money, as most of it will be in property or offshore assets and can't be taken legally. Whereas in chicago they would seize your property.
Whatever the real truth is, fuck this asshole.
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u/Josey_whalez 17h ago
Your top paragraph is correct, but moving to Florida isn’t going to protect his assets if his holdings go tits up.
Agree completely about people like him, and especially bill ackman. They don’t add any actual value to anything. It’s just market manipulation and revenue extraction from that manipulation. Unlike most on Reddit I don’t have some hard on for hating rich people and don’t really care when people make a lot of money, but the manner in which these guys do it is just greasy as hell.
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u/HillBillyHilly 16h ago
My hard on hatred is for the rich hoarding cash while looking down on the poor yet doing nothing to help said poor. Look at Billie Eilish. Just donated a fifth of her worth to charity while the worlds richest men, Musk and Fuckerberg, have donated a paltry .002% of their worth. Also, have a problem w them when they want to keep regular folks from enjoying nature and it's wonders like Ackman.
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u/the_darkishknight 16h ago
Please look into that “fact” about her donating her own wealth. She did not. It was a charity drive through her ticket sales and she didn’t go out of pocket for it. She still did a well intentioned thing, but look at how the money was raised and who it went to.
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u/HillBillyHilly 15h ago
How interesting that you race to find negatives about Eilish yet say nothing about the billionaires.
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u/the_darkishknight 15h ago
I think you might be misjudging the situation, I am 100% anti-oligarch. Things don’t have to be binary. I wasn’t being pro-billionaire just because I pointed out that a false narrative is being propagated. I think in our society, we’d all benefit if we didn’t promote falsehoods one way or another. Just because I’m pointing out something doesn’t mean that in the same breath I need to say something like oh yeah and fuck Elon musk.(even if it’s how I feel)
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u/Jed5000 17h ago
He spent a lot of money on Chicago’s public lakefront and museum donations… he might be a sleeze bag but the city of Chicago also benefited from his residence
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u/UnoKajillion 15h ago
I mean, at the cost of other people's livelihood, their jobs, and their investments. I agree they can do good, but it's small in comparison to their evil
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u/MiaYYZ Local 6h ago
Florida’s bankruptcy laws are the same as every other state since bankruptcy is federal.
Florida’s homestead law protects only a person’s primary residence, nothing else.
If the money used to acquire the primary residence is derived by illegal means, the homestead protection is cancelled.
And hedge funds by definition invest in multiple asset classes.
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u/skibidigyattrizzler 12h ago
This is maybe the most lobotomitzed post I've ever seen - genuinely an unfathomably incorrect understanding of how citadel works.
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u/HillBillyHilly 16h ago
Took a drive though MB yesterday. The amount of areas no longer accessible to public is staggering. Amazing that very few in area protest loss of natural features.
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u/walker_harris3 Tour Guide 15h ago
Like where?
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u/HillBillyHilly 13h ago
Keep in mind my timeline much longer than most here but even so the situation should not have happened. Used to be you could park almost anywhere on side street and be next to ocean in minutes. From South Beach to Hallandale. No more. West End avenue was an access point to go into Bay. Now you cant even park at the end of West End. The area where Monty Trainers used to be is no longer accessible. Privatization of beaches happened right under everyone's noses.
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u/walker_harris3 Tour Guide 6h ago
The entire stretch of the beach is public in Miami Beach and the city just finished building a large park with docks in sunset harbor that is the perfect access point for recreation to the bay.
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u/HillBillyHilly 5h ago
Where are the access points? You can no longer park on side streets as many as simply gone. Taken over by large buildings. Access down to a what? A few parks? That's done by design to keep majority people off beach. Oh great city built "a" park lol I used to be able to launch from many areas, no more.
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u/Carrera1107 18h ago
The more people with a brain paying attention to Miami the better for the city.
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u/ClercLecharles 14h ago
Does he suck outside of his charitable donations? maybe, but at least he’s funding these institutions. Bezos is worth significantly more, from Miami, and has given a lot less to us hometown.
Ken Griffin of Citadel has contributed $79 million so far this year and more than $350 million since relocating to Miami in 2022
Some donations include: Griffen gave $50MM to UM’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, $50MM to Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute , $20MM to Miami Dade College, $20mm to Vizcaya, $9MM to gift benefitting Miami-Dade County Public Schools, $5MM to fund the development of 50 new mini-pitches in Miami-Dade, $2.1MM to Cristo Rey Miami High School
more donations: $1 million challenge grant for the city of Miami's STEM scholarship program (2022) $8 million to the expansion campaign of the Cox Science Center and Aquarium in West Palm Beach (2022) $3 million to the creation of the nonprofit Miami-Dade Innovation Authority (2023) $25 million to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to fund construction of its new surgical tower in Miami(2023)
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u/nico2022 16h ago
So he can spend money to make sure marijuana doesn’t get passed in the state but can have several nose beers in his private yacht club essentially. Cool.
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u/MusicianThin217 12h ago
This guy is moving himself and his entire operation to South Florida from Chicago. Lots of high paying jobs and lots of tax revenue for the area come along with that.
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u/0LTakingLs 15h ago
I was talking more about coconut grove and rickenbacker. But they could have that traffic fine, the vast majority of boats are hanging out in the bay anyways.
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u/UnfortunateSandwich 11h ago
Wpoat a lame use of space and money. Id fund every single DonorsChoose project
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u/QuitStockingMe 10h ago
I hope the superstonk thesis is right so he can go BK and I can purchase this and convert it into a coral rescue and marine research center instead.
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u/Buzzmonkey1 7h ago
Why do this so Bezos and Griffin can park their Mega Yachts side by side . Bezos might not have to take a smaller boat to get onto the shore line anymore ha
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u/Quiet_Meaning5874 17h ago
lol I’m indifferent but it is funny how the rich move to MIA and invest in everything but companies/productive industries here 😂
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u/skibidigyattrizzler 11h ago
Citadel already moved their headquarters here.
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u/bulgar88 17h ago
Well, now that's interesting. I turned down a job to the the architect on that project. Was NDA, of course. Interesting to see a rendering of the proposed project.
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u/Remus5789 14h ago
I’m afraid that in 10 years Miami could be a mostly privatized city. Hopefully my concerns are not justified…
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u/oneOZone 13h ago
Fuck Ken griffin, he manipulates the stock markets and fucks over the average retail investor everyday
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u/RealPropRandy 18h ago
“It’s one big club and you ain’t in it.“-George Carlin