Billionaire Ken Griffin has announced plans to move his company Citadel to Miami, and will develop a new headquarters office tower in Brickell, according to Bloomberg and the WSJ.
Both the Citadel hedge fund and market-making firm Citadel Securities will be relocated to Miami.
The new office tower will be designed in partnership with Chicago developer Sterling Bay, and will located “on Brickell Bay.”
One possible location: 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. The site is the only vacant property on the bay in Brickell, and recently sold to an unidentified LLC with a Chicago address for a record-shattering $363 million.
1201 Brickell Bay Drive has approved plans for a supertall designed by Norman Foster.
Construction of the new HQ will be a multi-year process, the report said, but many Citadel employees have already moved to Miami, including Griffin himself.
There will already be several hundred Citadel employees in Miami by next year, according to the report. Some are already working out of offices in the Southeast Financial Center.
Citadel employees have been asking to relocate from Chicago to Miami and New York, Griffin wrote in a letter to employees. Citadel has about 1,000 employees in Chicago, and thousands worldwide.
“I am excited to have recently moved to Miami with my family and look forward to rapidly expanding Citadel in a city so rich in diversity and abounding with energy,” Griffin wrote.
Griffin’s donations to educational, cultural, medical and civic organizations in the Chicago area total over $600 million, according to a spokesperson, including a $125 million gift to the Museum of Science & Industry.
His company and its employees have also been significant contributors to the tax base in Chicago and Illinois.
Griffin has previously criticized the high crime rate in Chicago.
The most recent renderings for 1201 Brickell from architect of record ODP:
