Biggest South Florida Land Sale Closes at $1.1B

Citadel CEO & Founder Ken Griffin has acquired a 30-acre site in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood from Mana Common Founder & Chairman Moishe Mana for $1.1 billion, marking the largest land deal in South Florida’s history. A new campus for Carnegie Mellon University will rise on the site.

Griffin made a total gift of $3 billion to the educational institution, consisting of $1 billion earmarked for CMU’s Pittsburgh campus and $2 billion to support the university’s Miami launch, which, according to Financial Times, includes the land sale. This donation is the largest single investment in higher education in the history of the U.S., Griffin told Reuters.

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The campus will include research labs and venture studios that will support the activity of more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and PhD students, as well as some 300 faculty and north of 600 staff members. Construction may start next year, and the first students could enroll by 2028.

Research will span health and biological discovery, national security and strategy, energy and climate, as well as advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation.

A cultural, tech and finance hub

The newly acquired site also includes the Mana Wynwood Campus, which consists of a 100,000-square-foot convention center and an outdoor venue for concerts, festivals, private events and cultural programming. Mana will continue to operate and maintain existing events at the space for the foreseeable future.

Outside of entertainment, the Wynwood neighborhood is also a destination for tech and finance companies, such as Sony Music Group and crypto firm Gemini. These entities are on the tenant roster of 545 Wyn, a 298,000-square-foot office asset that Griffin and Goldman Properties acquired for $180 million earlier this year.

Amazon is also one of the major companies that have established a Wynwood office presence. The e-commerce giant occupies 75,000 square feet at Wynwood Plaza, a 1 million-square-foot mixed-use property owned by L&L Holding Co. and Oak Row Equities. The initial, 50,333-square-foot commitment, signed in January 2025, was at the time the largest lease ever recorded in the submarket.