Star Island is Reliving Its Glory Days, Thanks to Buyers Like Ken Griffin and Jennifer Lopez

A few weeks ago, singer and actress Jennifer Lopez and her fiancé, former Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, closed on a deal to buy a 10-bedroom mansion for $32.5 million, according to records and people familiar with the deal. Sold by Roustam Tariko, a Russian vodka billionaire, the roughly 15,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion has a wood-paneled wine room, a Jacuzzi and a dock, according to the listing and property records.

Like many recent Star Island buyers, Ms. Lopez and Mr. Rodriguez snagged the house for less: The house was asking $40 million, according to listings website Zillow.

Also in August, hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin picked up an empty lot on the island for $37 million, records show. Mr. Griffin has recently been on an international real-estate spending spree totaling close to $1 billion. The seller was Stuart Miller , executive chairman of home-building giant Lennar, who owns numerous lots there.

Other recent deals include a purchase by Aaron Rollins, a Los Angeles-based doctor and the creator of a cosmetic fat removal procedure who paid $17.5 million for his property. A trust tied to Mexican hotelier Carlos Gosselin and his wife Elisa Verstegui Gosselin also recently struck a deal to sell their home on the island for $24 million, records show.

“There has never been a year that we’ve seen this many luxury uber sales on that small island,” said Jill Hertzberg of Coldwell Banker Global Luxury, who was involved in some of the transactions.

Ms. Hertzberg and her business partner Jill Eber said they have seen an uptick in interest from home buyers coming from New York and California in search of lower taxes. More recently, the pandemic has convinced wealthy buyers that they can work remotely, meaning they don’t have to live on the doorsteps of the New York office towers, they said. “We’re really in a new reality,” said Ms. Eber.

While many of the deals closed for numbers far short of the properties’ initial asking prices, many of which were dreamed up when the market was hotter, they were still pricey.

In July, Mr. Miller sold one of his properties on the island, a massive estate comprising a recently built contemporary mansion and a 1920s-era guesthouse, for $49.46 million, records show. Appraiser Jonathan Miller said he believed the sale was a record for the island.

Oren Alexander, a local agent with Douglas Elliman who has also done deals on the island over the past year, said the sale showed buyers that now might be the time to buy. “As soon as people heard that it was under contract, there was a domino effect,” he said.

Roughly half the size of an average golf course, Star Island is a flat sandy oval bisected by a road lined with towering palm trees. The roughly 30 compounds that line the island’s perimeter, facing onto Biscayne Bay, each has its own personality; ultramodern mansions are interspersed with historic Mediterranean style villas, some of which date to the construction of the island in the 1920s.

Star Island’s secluded location means celebrities are largely spared from the glare of the paparazzi, aside from those shutterbugs who take to the water for a better vantage point. While the island is technically accessible to the public, a security guard mans the gatehouse at the single road’s entrance at all times and jots down license plate numbers.

The island is also just a few minutes’ drive from downtown Miami and South Beach and, for owners with boats too large to fit on their private docks, there is a string of nearby marinas in which to keep their yachts. Each of the island’s lots spans about 40,000 square feet, with about 100 feet of frontage on the bay. Some residents have opted to buy two or even three consecutive lots to expand their footprint.

The island was originally conceptualized not long after the 1918 pandemic by Miami developer Carl Fisher, who discovered that he could create his own island by dredging sand. The island was completed in 1922.

“I grew up in Miami Beach, and even as a little kid I’d love to read the stories of the people who built the homes on Star Island,” said Daniel Ciraldo, the executive director at the Miami Design Preservation League. “In many ways, it reflects the American story. A lot of these people are living their American dream.”

Stories like how, in the 1980s, actor Don Johnson lived on the island while playing detective Sonny Crockett on “Miami Vice.” And how Ms. O’Donnell’s former home was once occupied by a marijuana-smoking religious organization known as the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church that declared the house their “embassy.” In the 1970s, neighbors complained about the smell of dense marijuana smoke wafting around the island.

Real-estate developer Thomas Kramer, who made a fortune in South Florida real estate in the 1990s and used to own a property on the island, was known for throwing extravagant parties and for handing out T-shirts that read “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to 5 Star Island,” according to the book “Fool’s Paradise: Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach.”

When he lost the home to creditors a few years ago, Mr. Kramer left behind possessions like a custom-made coffin and a dining table with two stripper poles on top, which were subsequently auctioned off, The Wall Street Journal reported. He previously told the Journal that he had the coffin on hand because he “wanted to die like Elvis Presley on overdose in party mode—being the king of party in Miami.”

Other notable residents include Russia-born hospitality magnate Vladislav Doronin; the owner of the resort brand Aman bought Shaquille O’Neal’s property for $16 million in 2009, and extensively renovated it.

Phillip Frost , a billionaire chief executive of pharmaceutical and medical diagnostics company Opko Health, and his wife Patricia Frost have lived there since the 1990s, records show. The island also counts two former “Real Housewives of Miami” stars—Lea Black and Lisa Hochstein—among its residents.

“I got to Miami in 1995,” said Leonard Hochstein, Ms. Hochstein’s husband and a prominent plastic surgeon. “Back then, Star Island was always considered one of those places where the rich and famous live. I never envisioned being able to live there myself, but it’s funny how things work out.”

Dr. Hochstein later became known for his breast enhancements—he describes himself as a “boob god”—and bought the site of their home for $7.6 million in 2012.

The Hochsteins then ran afoul of Mr. Ciraldo’s preservation group, which wanted to protect an existing home on the site. They sued him and he sued the group, but the suits were both eventually dropped.

“It wasn’t special at all, a regular old home that wasn’t built particularly well,” said Dr. Hochstein of the home that formerly sat on the property, which dated back to the 1920s. “It was an unfortunate situation.” Mr. Ciraldo said the group had launched the campaign in part to raise awareness of the significance of the homes on the island, which fall outside of any historic preservation zone.

While the tussle quickly ended, it was emblematic of the growing tension between old and new architecture on the island, which has resulted in Star Island’s latest trend: Moving an older home to the corner of the lot, and building a new one where it once stood.

Dr. Hochstein’s neighbor, dental-products entrepreneur John Jansheski, moved a 1920s-era Mediterranean-revival style mansion on his Star Island property to another part of his lot so he could build a new modern house in its place. Mr. Jansheski couldn’t be reached for comment.

The property has housed visiting celebrities like Cher and Ricky Martin, Mr. Estefan told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. He noted that his daughter had been christened there, with Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey in attendance. Mr. Estefan said he originally bought the house for his mother, who has since died, and had hoped his children would live there, but the home is too large for them. The Estefans allowed Ms. Lopez to host her 50th birthday celebration at the island last year.

Write to Katherine Clarke at [email protected]