Billionaire Ken Griffin is an insatiable man! After the 58-year-old founder of the Miami-based hedge fund Citadel won unanimous approval from the City of Miami Beach Planning Board to build a private marina for his yachts, he is back for more. This time, the large-hearted billionaire wants permission to add a private waterfront helipad to the sprawling multi-million-dollar development on Terminal Island, a 30,000 sq ft private marina on a waterfront parcel at 120 MacArthur Causeway.
From a billionaire’s perspective, it completes his hedonistic picture of a fully private air-sea-land arrival system for himself, his yacht, and his guests. What good is a marina with a mighty 308-foot superyacht if the billionaire cannot access it from his own helicopter, attached to Griffin’s wider South Florida empire? The private compound, designed by BMA Architects, already has an owner’s pavilion, a separate crew pavilion, operations and maintenance space, security offices, and at least one rooftop pool. Why not add a helipad too and call it a day?
According to the Miami Herald, the request for the helipad, sponsored on June 24 by Miami Beach Commissioner Joseph Magazine, is now before the Miami Beach Land Use and Sustainability Committee and the city’s Planning Board. They will decide whether to recommend rewriting the city’s zoning code to allow Griffin’s helicopter pad.
What makes this work, of course, is that the site is industrial land. That is the whole trick. Griffin is not trying to land helicopters in some leafy residential pocket of Miami Beach. He is using a piece of land next to ferry terminals, an FPL plant, and the Coast Guard, which makes this feel less outrageous from a zoning standpoint. This would exempt the billionaire, worth $50 billion, from getting stuck in traffic and allow him to access his possessions more seamlessly.
The only hurdle is a zoning amendment in Terminal Island’s industrial district. Right now, private helipads are not allowed there. The Citadel boss only wants Miami Beach to rewrite the rules, limited to Terminal Island’s industrial zoning. The man who bought rare editions of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, signed by Abraham Lincoln, would still need the necessary approvals from the Florida Department of Transportation and the FAA.
Also, this would allow his $250 million superyacht Defy (ex-Viva), with its touch-and-go helipad on the foredeck, to be put to use. So the marina helipad is not an unrelated flex. It is consistent with how the yacht was conceived. Another nice detail is that Miami-Dade has relatively few helipads, many of them tied to hospitals, so even in a city obsessed with wealth and access, this would still be a rare amenity.
