Louise Riggio, the widow of Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio, sold her oceanfront compound in Palm Beach for $81 million, making it one of the priciest sales on the island this year.
Records show Riggio sold the mansion at 1446 North Ocean Boulevard to a Delaware LLC named for the address and managed by local law firm Rabideau Klein. The true buyer is hidden.
Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates had the listing. Moens is one of the top agents in Palm Beach and a press-shy dealmaker who’s represented Donald Trump, Larry Ellison and Ken Griffin.
This latest sale lands Riggio’s estate among the priciest to trade in Palm Beach this year.
Her late husband, Leonard Riggio, founded his bookstore empire in 1965 and grew it to become one of the nation’s largest booksellers in the decades that followed. He retired from his post as executive chairman in 2016, and died in August after battling Alzheimer’s.
The Riggios bought a house in Wellington for $8.1 million in June, and also own a unit in New York City’s storied Upper East Side co-op 720 Park Avenue and a sprawling 13-acre Hamptons estate.
The couple had listed the Palm Beach estate in June for $96 million, and went into contract just a few weeks before Leonard Riggio’s death. They bought the 8,000-square-foot mansion on 1.2 acres in 2003 for $14 million, and an adjacent quarter-acre lot for $1.4 million in 2009. The estate’s main house was built in 1979 and has five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, one half-bathroom and a pool, records show.
Oceanfront Palm Beach homes are a rare and highly sought-after commodity, agents on the island say. This year, Daren Metropoulos, the son of billionaire Dean Metropoulos, dropped $148 million on an oceanfront historic estate in June, and Ideavillage founder Anand Khubani sold an oceanfront lot for $85 million in April.
Agents say activity has picked up in Palm Beach’s luxury real estate market in recent weeks, following a pre-election slowdown. Developer Todd Glaser sold a waterfront spec home to billionaire inventor Herbert Wertheim for $38 million earlier this month. In October, the home of late developer Jerry Schuster and his wife, Elaine Schuster, sold for $42.5 million. In September, a non-waterfront Palm Beach home sold for $17.1 million.
