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Beachfront home for sale for $96 million, contract signed in Palm Beach

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The former Barnes & Noble CEO and his wife are selling the North End home at 1446 N. Ocean Blvd., which they’ve owned since 2003. The listing had been publicly listed on the MLS for less than six weeks.

A Palm Beach home with an asking price of $96 million has gone under contract, less than six weeks after it was listed publicly on an online listing site.

The estate at 1446 N. Ocean Blvd. is owned by Leonard Riggio, the former chairman of the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain, and his wife Louise.

The Palm Beach Daily News is the first outlet to report the impending sale. There is no word yet on the deep-pocketed buyer, the amount that will change hands or when the sale will close.

The listing’s status on the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service was updated on July 24 to indicate that a sale was “pending” but with conditions, which typically means the buyer could back out of the deal without paying a financial penalty. The status was changed to “pending” with no conditions late in the afternoon of July 30.

The modern-style home overlooks about 205 feet of beach and sits on about 1.68 acres on the far North End, according to property records. Because the back of the house faces a federally protected dune and beach parcel of about the same size, the property appears much larger than it actually is.

The estate is among the most expensive single-family homes ever listed for sale on the MLS.

Realtor Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates has the listing. He and the Riggios could not be reached for comment.

The listing had been in the MLS since June 3, records show. But it didn’t enter the “active” listing category until June 20, when it was first made available to the public.

The Riggios bought the home in 2003 for a reported $14 million. In 2009, they expanded the property with the purchase of an adjacent parcel for $1.45 million, court records show.

Built in 1979, the house is located where the coastal road makes a sharp turn, about two-fifths of a mile from the inlet at the northern tip of the island. In total, the house has seven bedrooms and 11,042 square feet of living space, inside and out.

The listing was first reported by PalmBeachDailyNews.com in an exclusive story.

The Riggios’ home features modular architecture. A one-story atrium at the front door connects the main body of the residence—public spaces and a second-floor master bedroom suite—on the south side with the guest quarters on the north. A sun deck overlooks the oceanfront pool.

The house sits three lots south of land that was once the estate of the late conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

The Riggios have long had ties to New York. Leonard Riggio’s career as a bookseller began in 1965, according to an online biography. In the early 1970s, he grew Barnes & Noble into the world’s largest bookstore.

Today, Barnes & Noble is owned by Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd. and Leonard Riggio is no longer with the company.

In May, Louise Riggio paid $8.1 million for a home at 3540 Ambassador Road in Wellington, the equestrian community in western Palm Beach County where the Riggios already owned property, court records show.

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Portions of this story previously appeared in the Palm Beach Daily News.

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To see more photos of 1446 N. Ocean Blvd., click on the photo gallery at the top of this page.

Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida reporter who covers Palm Beach real estate in his weekly column, “Beyond the Hedges.” He welcomes tips on real estate news on the island. Email [email protected], call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.