By Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News
The beachfront house that served as the longtime Palm Beach vacation retreat of the late Leonard Riggio — former chairman of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain — has sold for $81 million, the price recorded Nov. 15 with the deed.
Riggio and his widow, Louise, had bought their contemporary-style house at 1446 N. Ocean Blvd. on Palm Beach’s far North End in 2003 for $14 million. In 2009, they expanded the property with the purchase of an adjacent parcel for $1.45 million, courthouse records show.
The Palm Beach Daily News is the first media outlet to report the sale.
Leonard Riggio, who also co-founded videogame retailer GameStop, died in New York Aug. 26 at 83.
The buyer was a Delaware limited liability company named 1446-65 N Ocean Way LLC, with a mailing address in care of real estate attorney David Klein of the Rabideau Klein law firm in Palm Beach. Klein could not be immediately reached for comment.
Because of Delaware’s strict corporate privacy laws, no other information about the buyer was immediately available in public records.
The estate had been listed at $96 million by broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates, who also represented the buyer, according to the multiple listing service. The listing entered the “active” category of the MLS June 20 and landed under contract about six weeks later.
Moens and Louise Riggio could not be reached for comment.
The three separate parcels that comprise the estate changed hands via one deed, the document shows.
The Riggios also owned homes in New York City and in Wellington, the equestrian community in in western Palm Beach County.
The land on North Ocean Boulevard measures 1.68 acres with about 205 feet of beachfront, according to property records. But because the rear of the house faces a federally protected dune-and-beach parcel of about the same size, the estate appears much larger when viewed from the residence.
The two-story house was built in 1979 with seven bedrooms and 11,042 square feet of living space, inside and out, including 8,005 square feet under air conditioning.
The house stands at the point where the coastal road makes a sharp curve, about two-fifths of a mile from the inlet at the northern tip of the island.
The house stands three lots south of land that was once home to the estate of the late conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. That 2.65-acre estate sold privately for a recorded $155 million in March 2023 and was then razed by the buyer, a company controlled by Estée Lauder billionaire William Lauder.
The former Riggio house has modular-style architecture. A one-story atrium at the front door connects the largest part of the residence — with the public rooms and a second-floor primary bedroom suite — on the south to the guest area on the north. That bedroom has an oceanfront balcony and adjoining sitting room. The second level also has a sun terrace overlooking look the pool area.
The first floor of the main wing at the Riggio house has a living room, sunroom, dining room, a covered outdoor loggia, an outside dining courtyard and kitchen.
Leonard Riggio had longtime ties to New York. His career as a bookseller began in 1965, according to an online biographical sketch. In 1971, he acquired the Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship bookstore in Manhattan, merging it with his own bookselling business, the company’s website says. He grew Barnes & Noble exponentially until it was billed as the world’s largest bookselling company.
Riggio sold the company in 2019 to Elliott Management, a hedge fund, for about $475 million in cash, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company today is owned through Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd. and run by CEO and bookseller James Daunt.
Riggio and his wife bought the house from retired automotive executive Stanley N. Gaines and his Republican Party activist wife, Gay Hart Gaines, who owned a house next door they sold for a recorded $41.5 million in 2012. Moens handled both sides of that off-market sale at 1473 N. Ocean Blvd, according to reporting by the Palm Beach Daily News.
The Gaineses had nicknamed the estate they sold to the Riggios “Turtle Beach.”
In May, Louise Riggio paid $8.1 million for a house at 3540 Ambassador Road in Wellington, the equestrian community in western Palm Beach County where the Riggios already owned property, courthouse records show. The deed for that sale lists Louise Riggio’s mailing address as the couple’s Park Avenue co-op apartment in New York City.
In the Wellington purchase recorded May 23, Louise Riggio bought the four-bedroom house from Stacey and Ramin Arani. Built in 2003 on a half-acre lot, that house has 7,231 total square feet, according to property records.
The Riggio family has had a long interest in equestrian sports, thoroughbred racing and related charities, according to published reports. Since 2005, the family has had a Wellington equestrian property on Olde Hampton Drive, courthouse records show.
A noted art collector, Leonard Riggio was involved in a wide range of philanthropic and humanitarian causes, according to his obituary.