Fontainebleau Owner Jeffrey Soffer Sells Miami Casino Parcels for Big Profit
Posted on: December 22, 2025, 11:07h.
Last updated on: December 22, 2025, 11:27h.
- Land previously tied to the Big Easy Casino has been sold
- Florida real estate magnate Jeffrey Soffer owns the Hallandale Beach racino
Fontainebleau Resorts’ billionaire owner, Jeffrey Soffer, expanded his net worth recently by selling unused acres surrounding his Big Easy Casino in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
The Florida real estate magnate acquired the Mardi Gras Casino and Hollywood Greyhound Track in 2018 for $12.5 million. Being located within Broward County, one of two counties in Florida where slots are allowed, the racino is permitted to house gaming machines.
Soffer rebranded Mardi Gras to Big Easy soon after acquiring the 70K-square-foot gaming property from Hartman & Tyner, a family-owned property management firm based in Michigan. Florida banned greyhound racing in 2020, though Soffer’s Hollywood Greyhound Track ceased live racing in 2018.
To appease Broward County’s slots regulations that require such gaming to only operate at licensed parimutuel facilities, Big Easy continues to feature simulcast racing and off-track betting. Soffer is now selling off unused parts of the Big Easy compound.
Big Easy Makes Big Sale
The South Florida Business Journal reports that Soffer recently sold 12.3 acres of the Big Easy Casino property through two deeds for $31.16 million to a consortium of buyers. The acquisition team plans to develop the property into condominiums, retail shops, and warehouses for luxury goods.
Soffer’s Big Easy Casino has about 800 slot machines. Financial information disclosed by the Florida Gaming Commission reveals that the casino generated gross revenue, or money kept by the casino after paying out winnings, of more than $38.1 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025. Taxes on the gaming win came to $13.3 million.
Before the property sale, the Big Easy Casino site spanned more than 36 acres. The prime real estate is less than two miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean.
Fontainebleau Fortune
Soffer is the son of the late Donald Soffer, a Florida real estate developer whose Turnberry Associates co-developed The Signature at MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2004. A year later, Turnberry purchased the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach for $165 million.
The younger Soffer founded Fontainebleau Resorts that same year. He sought to put his own mark in the luxury hotel industry by announcing in 2005 plans to bring the Fontainebleau brand to the Las Vegas Strip with a new, from-the-ground-up casino resort. Turnberry paid almost $100 million for less than four acres of prime Strip land for the project.
Construction began in early 2007 on the roughly $3 billion undertaking. The Great Recession effectively halted the project despite it being about 75% complete. Billionaire Carl Icahn bought the resort in bankruptcy in 2010 for $151 million.
Icahn did nothing to bring the property to completion. He instead sold it to Steve Witkoff, now the US special envoy to the Middle East under the Trump administration, in 2017 for $600 million.
COVID-19, Witkoff said, rendered his plans unattainable. He sold the unfinished towering blue structure back to Soffer and Koch Real Estate Investments in early 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
The real estate investment trust of the billionaire Koch family secured $2.2 billion in financing to finish the Fontainebleau and open the Strip casino in December 2023.
No comments yet