Billionaire Jeff Greene has sold Palm Beach’s landmark main post office building to the company that owns The Breakers resort next door. 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.
Greene, a Palm Beach resident, 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.
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 purchase “marks the final phase of The Breakers’ seven-year strategic initiative to revitalize historic Main Street and the surrounding neighborhood,” according to a statement from The Breakers.
The property “is conveniently located within walking distance of the resort,” adding that exact plans for the building are “under review,” the statement said.
The other Breakers-related property acquisitions in the immediate area 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 at the south end of Royal Poinciana Way, the city’s historic main street.
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.
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.
Greene sold the old post office through a California-registered limited partnership called Little Broad Beach Partners LP, the deed shows. A message left for Greene was not immediately returned Thursday, December 26.
The new owner purchased the property through a Florida entity called The Breakers Palm Beach Inc.
Due to its historic status, the building cannot be demolished. The city granted it landmark status in 2009, protecting the exterior walls from major changes without approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Located about a block from the ocean, the building looks straight through the landscaped median of Royal Poinciana Way toward 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.
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. The Breakers and its predecessors date back to 1896, when the original seaside hotel opened as The Palm Beach Inn.
In the statement on the purchase of the former post office, Paul N. Leone, CEO of The Breakers, said the new owner would be a good steward of the property.
Paul Leone is president and CEO of Flagler System Inc., the parent company of Flagler System Management and The Breakers Palm Beach Inc.
“With the same care given to our other properties in the Royal Poinciana Way neighborhood, The Breakers remains committed to investing in the preservation of this historic landmark,” Leone said. “This reflects the continued commitment of our owners, the Kenan family, to improving the community. Their long-term vision is fundamental to the business strategy and success of our organization.”
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. Greene 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.
Greene lived in Palm Beach as a youth and once worked as a waiter and busboy at The Breakers. He said in 2011 that he had a sentimental attachment to the post office building. 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 article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Resort company pays $28 million for historic Palm Beach post office building
