Billionaire Republican megadonor Ken Griffin’s high-profile bet on Miami hit a dangerous setback this week when a massive drill rig toppled onto a busy street at his new Citadel headquarters site, crushing three vehicles and setting one on fire.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Monday morning accident sent four people to the hospital and prompted Miami-Dade County officials to issue a stop-work order, halting all construction until investigators complete their review. A spokeswoman for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is investigating, said similar probes can stretch up to six months.
A Griffin spokesman struck a relieved but cautious tone, saying, “We are grateful that nobody was seriously injured in this week’s incident.”
The mishap adds to a long list of headaches that have already delayed the project since Griffin bought the Brickell waterfront parcel for $363 million in 2022. He’s since switched development partners, expanded the building’s footprint by buying out most owners in a neighboring condo building, and watched costs balloon from an original $1 billion estimate to roughly $2.5 billion for the planned 52-story tower, now also slated to include a 300-unit residential building and separate parking garage.
The ground itself is part of the challenge. Miami’s coastline doesn’t offer the solid bedrock that supports skyscraper construction in places like New York; instead, builders here have to work with soft, water-saturated ground, using heavy machinery to pump in cement and stabilize the earth well before a tower can rise. It was that kind of equipment involved in Monday’s collapse.
The site has also struggled for months with stormwater mitigation issues tied to South Florida’s King Tide season, and as of mid-September, developers were still waiting on permits to operate temporary wells meant to divert water back into the aquifer.
In recent years, Florida has become a political destination for businessmen and public figures tied to the Republican Party. Griffin, who has sometimes been critical of Trump but remains an enthusiastic backer of the GOP at large, relocated Citadel from Chicago and has publicly defended choosing Miami over New York.
Since then, he has continued aggressively expanding his footprint in the neighborhood, buying up surrounding properties unit by unit.
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