Developer who bought Jeffrey Epstein's Florida beach estate plans to demolish the property by April

The Florida mansion where Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused young girls has been bought by a real estate developer who plans to demolish it but he needs to ask for permission from the neighbors before razing it to the ground.

Todd Michael Glaser, a Florida real estate developer, has signed a contract to buy the property, and is hoping to close on it by January 15. 

He plans to tear the property down and replace it with a 14,000-square-foot ‘Art Moderne home’ and if everything goes according to plan he hopes to have the place flattened before April 1st.

Before such a demolition can proceed, Glaser must ask for permission from the local neighborhood in order to raze the six-bedroom main house and three-bedroom staff house.

Such a request is necessary because of the pricey nature of the posh enclave which usually prohibits such demolition projects during the winter months, when wealthy snowbirds flock to so-called Billionaires Row for its warm climate, white sandy beaches and palatial homes.

‘Neighbors who are usually against something like this will possibly be for it,’ Glaser told The Daily News.

‘We have all these gawkers. If the house is gone, what are they going to take a picture of? So we might be able to get it knocked down early, which I want to do, just to get rid of it,’ he said.

‘Palm Beach is going to be very happy that it’s gone,’ he added.   

‘It’s wild. People came out to the site, sent emails. People showed up at my house in Miami Beach. I have a woman telling me she’s calling the EPA, something about nuclear medicine,’ he said.

‘A women’s group wants to go in and do a prayer. I’ve got neighbors praying I can knock this down,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to get this thing knocked down.’  

The waterfront Palm Beach estate, just over a mile from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, went on the market in July for $21.995 million.    

The property had been locked up for over 18 months, since Epstein’s arrest, and has been graffitied with the words with the words ‘GONE BUT NOT FORGIVEN’ in blood-red paint.   

He declined to confirm the price, but said he received a discount.

Sources told the paper the sale price was around $18 million.

Glaser is known for building extravagantly-designed homes for wealthy and demanding clients, such as a home on Miami’s Star Island that recently sold for about $49.5 million. 

He was also one of the developers of the One Thousand Museum tower designed by the late Zaha Hadid in downtown Miami.

In June, Glaser confirmed that he had bought a 1925 mansion in Palm Beach for $17 million, which he intended to ‘restore to its former glory’, and where he intended to live with his wife, Kim.

Glaser has been developing property in the Palm Beach area since 2017. 

In February, he and partners Philip Levine, Scott Robins and Jonathan Fryd sold a spec home at 113 Atlantic Avenue for $9.41 million to a scion of the family that founded Cumberland Farms, according to The Real Deal.

Next door, at 111 Atlantic Avenue, another spec home that the partners developed is under contract and is expected to close in July, Glaser said.

The partners also developed two spec villas with a courtyard at 237 Brazilian Avenue in Palm Beach, which recently hit the market for $7.9 million each, the site reported. 

Epstein, who died in jail awaiting his sex trafficking trial in August 2019, bought the Palm Beach property in 1990 for $2.5 million.  

The property has roughly 170 feet of water frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway, with space for a dock. 

The six-bedroom, roughly 14,000-square-foot house with a large swimming pool was designed by architect John Volk in what is described as West Indies style.

Built in 1952, it was one of a number of properties where Epstein groomed and sexually assaulted underage girls and women as part of a sprawling sex trafficking scheme, prosecutors said. 

The house was where the crimes that would eventually lead to his downfall were first reported, in 2005.

Epstein had been recruiting teenage girls for ‘massages’ from Palm Beach high school, and one eventually confessed to her mother what was going on, who then went to the police.

Dozens of victims were underprivileged middle and high school girls recruited in and around Palm Beach County between 1998 and 2006. 

Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state prostitution charges in 2008 and served 13 months in a local jail however, the sentence ended up being a work-release program. 

After his conviction, Epstein continued living high-life and would jet between his homes in Palm Beach, his Manhattan Upper East Side townhouse, Paris, his New Mexico ranch and a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little St James which were also venues for abuse.

He was arrested again at Teterboro Airport in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking minors in New York and Florida and died by suicide in jail a month later.

The New York townhouse is still on the market, with a reduced asking price of $65 million, according to the website of the listing agent, Adam Modlin of Modlin Group.

The sprawling East 71st home saw its price decrease some 26 percent from its original asking price of $88 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.