Billionaire Jeff Greene has sold Palm Beach’s landmark main post office building to a company linked to neighboring resort The Breakers. The price of the off-market sale was set at $28 million through a deed posted Dec. 26 by the Palm Beach County Clerk’s office.
City resident Greene owned the Mediterranean-style building at 95 N. County Road through one of his companies, which paid $3.725 million for it in 2011. After the purchase, Greene kept the exterior and lobby intact, with its historic murals. and used the remainder of the 1936 building as office space for his energy and fuel company and his real estate investment business.
Palm Beach’s historic main post office building at 95 N. County Road, built in 1936, has not served as a post office in more than a decade. Billionaire Jeff Greene just sold the building for a record $28 million to a company linked to the adjacent resort The Breakers Palm Beach.
The purchase further expands The Breakers’ real estate portfolio in the Royal Poinciana Way commercial district. The latest deal brings to eight the number of property acquisitions the resort and its subsidiaries have completed in the area since 2010.
The other purchases include almost all of the buildings on the north side of Royal Poinciana Way between Bradley Place and North County Road. The Breakers Golf Course not only runs directly south of the historic Post Office, but is also located on land on the south side of Royal Poinciana Way, the city’s historic main street.
Breakers-related street transactions have totaled more than $100 million, courthouse records show. But that total doesn’t include the money that changed hands in a massive transaction in September involving multiple commercial buildings. That private deal sold the buildings on the east side of Royal Poinciana Way and adjacent Sunset Avenue, some of which are adjacent to North County Road. Due to the way the sale was structured, a price for the transaction was never recorded at the Palm Beach County Courthouse.
A company affiliated with The Breakers Palm Beach resort purchased several buildings in the Royal Poinciana Way commercial district in September, including storefronts on and near the corner of Royal Poinciana Way and North County Road.
Greene sold the old post office through a California-registered limited partnership called Little Broad Beach Partners LP, the deed shows.
Messages left for Greene and The Breakers representatives about the sale were not immediately returned on December 26. It is unclear how the new owner plans to use the old post office, which cannot be demolished due to its historic status. The city granted the building monumental protection in 2009.
Located about a block from the ocean, the building looks straight through the landscaped median of Royal Poinciana Way to the Flagler Memorial Bridge. On a half-acre lot, the building has 13,932 square feet of space, both indoors and outdoors, property records show.
When Greene purchased the building from the US Postal Service, a post office was still operating there. It closed several months later and moved to nearby Royal Poinciana Plaza, where it functions as one of two post offices in Palm Beach.
Jeff Greene has sold Palm Beach’s historic Main Post Office building, which he used as an office, for a record $28 million to a company associated with The Breakers Palm Beach resort.
Under the terms of the 2011 sale, Greene was required to keep the grand lobby of the old post office intact, in accordance with the preservation covenants attached to the deed. These covenants related to the building’s inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
The covenants noted “architecturally and/or historically significant exterior and interior features,” including the series of three murals depicting a Seminole village painted in the late 1930s by artist Charles Rosen and installed on the east wall of the lobby .
The list of protected features also noted the two-story “space and volume of the public lobby,” the mailboxes on the north and east walls of the lobby, bronze and wood grilles covering the windows of the second floor of the lobby and the two marble plinths of the lobby. desks and tiled floor.
When The Breakers affiliate purchased the nearby buildings in September, a statement was issued on behalf of Paul Leone, president and CEO of Flagler System Inc., the parent company of Flagler System Management and The Breakers Palm Beach Inc. “with The Breakers’ ongoing initiative to preserve and revitalize historic Main Street and the surrounding neighborhood of Palm Beach,” the statement said, noting that the buildings are within walking distance of the resort.
Paul Leone is president and CEO of Flagler System Inc., the parent company of Flagler System Management and The Breakers Palm Beach Inc.
The Breakers’ parent company’s holdings on Royal Poinciana Way include the ground floor and underground parking garage at Via Flagler by The Breakers, a mixed-use development in which the resort leases space to tenants and operates Henry’s Palm Beach restaurant. The Breakers’ company purchased the property there from Frisbie Group, the project’s developer, in a $20 million deal that closed in late 2018. Frisbie Group was also the seller of the nearby buildings that changed hands in September.
The Breakers and its affiliated companies are privately owned by the North Carolina-based Kenan family, who are directly related to Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham, the widow of railroad and hotel magnate Henry Flagler. In the late 1800s, Flagler transformed Palm Beach into the nation’s premier winter resort town for the so-called Gilded Age society.
With its Twin Towers, the private Breakers Palm Beach resort celebrated its 128th anniversary in February. The resort’s golf course is located directly south of Palm Beach’s historic main post office, which just sold for a record $28 million.
Since 2009, Greene has owned a landmark oceanfront mansion, La Billucia, where he and his wife, Mei Sze, and their family live on South Ocean Boulevard, near President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. He also owns the Tideline Palm Beach Resort and Spa at 2848 S. Ocean Blvd. on the south side of the city.
Forbes estimates Greene’s fortune at $7.9 billion.
Greene has been building a two-tower office, apartment and hotel complex on the north side of downtown West Palm Beach for several years.
In 2010, Greene ran for U.S. Senate but lost in the Democratic primary for the seat, which was ultimately won by Republican Marco Rubio.
In April 2024, a company affiliated with the resort’s parent company The Breakers purchased this mixed-use building at 233-235 Royal Poinciana Way in Palm Beach for $12 million, the price listed in the deed.
Greene lived in Palm Beach as a teenager and once worked a service job at The Breakers. He told the Palm Beach Daily News in 2011 that he had a sentimental attachment to the post office. He regularly picked up mail from PO Box 227 for his father, the late Marshall Greene, after the family moved to a small apartment on Sunset Avenue before moving to West Palm Beach, Greene said at the time.
“I’ve known that building since I was a little kid, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to it,” Greene said, explaining why he bought the property. “What a beautiful building.”
This is a development story. Check back for any updates.
dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly column “Beyond the Hedges.” He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Resort company pays $28 million for historic Palm Beach post office building
