Ken Griffin is the latest billionaire to join South Florida’s increasingly in demand private golf scene, becoming a member of the Riviera Country Club, as the club looks to capitalize on the region’s wealth boom.
The billionaire hedge fund manager’s name is among a short list of new members who have been nominated to join the club at 1155 Blue Road, The Real Deal has learned. The board of directors is expected to vote on the new members at a meeting later this month. Griffin was nominated by Sherill and Mary Ann Hudson, and Nathan and Victoria Zeder. Zeder, an immediate past president and a top broker with the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker, declined to comment.
Griffin would join as a full golf member, which is a new membership class the club created in October. The non-voting membership is being offered at $2 million to 10 people, and allows individuals to skip the waiting list. The existing golf membership costs $175,000.
Riviera and other private clubs are taking advantage of the influx of ultra-wealthy individuals to South Florida, where wait lists have become the norm. Centibillionaires, who include Griffin and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have all invested in luxury real estate here.
Griffin has spent billions of dollars assembling waterfront homes in Miami, Miami Beach and Palm Beach, as well as commercial real estate in Brickell and Wynwood. In late September, Griffin paid $1.1 billion for the Mana Wynwood Convention Center, where Carnegie Mellon University will open a satellite campus. Griffin is also building a new headquarters tower along the Brickell Bay waterfront for his companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities, which he moved from Chicago after the pandemic.
More than 150 people are on the wait list at Riviera, TRD previously reported. And Griffin isn’t the only new member the board will likely accept at its upcoming meeting. Several wait list members expressed interest in the new membership class.
The club has undergone a renovation and expansion in recent years.
Half of the projected $20 million will be directed to an interest-generating investment account to subsidize dues income, and additional funding will be used for capital planning.
In Miami-Dade, private golf clubs include La Gorce Country Club, Indian Creek Country Club and Deering Bay Yacht & Country Club. But developers are also adding new ones across South Florida.
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Skip the line: Riviera Country Club adds $2M membership, seizing on wealth boom
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