$295M price draws attention

Pittsburgh’s Donahue family is making waves in Florida’s real estate market with a jaw-dropping $295 million list price for the family compound in Naples.

The nine-acre gated compound with three houses and a private yacht basin is currently the most expensive residential listing in Florida, according to the team of real estate agents marketing the property.

The family patriarch, John Donahue, made his fortune in the financial services industry as co-founder of the Downtown fi-nancial management firm Federated Investors. The company is still headquartered in Pittsburgh operating as an international firm — Federated Hermes, which now reports $757 billion in managed assets and has a sign that towers over the Allegheny River side of Downtown.

John Donahue and his wife, Rhodora, assembled the land that now makes up the property and built the compound over a period of years with large family gatherings in mind. For 35 years, the Donahue family used it for holiday celebrations, water sports and special occasions that allowed more than 100 family members to sleep overnight.

John Donahue died in 2017. Rhodora continued to lived on Gordon Pointe until she passed away in 2022. The couple were married for 70 years. Their legacy — the full Donahue clan — consists of about 335 family members, including their 13 children, plus grandchildren, great-grandchildren and spouses who married into the family.

“My parents loved everybody. And they loved it when everybody came,” said Bill Donahue, 68, one of John and Rhodora’s 13 children. “With them not there, it does change the whole feeling of it.

“We all are still using it currently. And lots of us still go down there,” said Mr. Donahue, who lives in Pittsburgh. “But it definitely has a different feel to it without my parents around.”

To hear him describe the place, it was built to accommodate growing families as well as take advantage of the weather and the water that comes with being on the Florida coast.

He said the three homes that make up the compound contain 19 total bedrooms. Most of the bedrooms contain four bunk beds and every room has a walk-in type closet with space for babies or an infant crib.

“The biggest gatherings with people sleeping there had every bed filled. That happened regularly while my parents were there,” Mr. Donahue said.

Holidays could be especially fun.

“Halloween was a big happening for my family. My mother and dad they just enjoyed it … they loved seeing the little kids there. So, they would always have a Halloween costume parade on the property.

“Then, at Thanksgiving that was another big time when lots of people from the North would come down as well. Christmas and New Year’s — the same thing,” Mr. Donahue said.

Mr. Donahue lives in Pittsburgh and runs the family office — the Beechwood Co., which has 13 seats on its board (one for each sibling) and makes decisions about family assets. He’s also president of the Donahue Family Foundation, which does charitable giving, primarily in the Pittsburgh and Naples areas.

Mr. Donahue has his a home in Naples and so do most of his siblings. Seven of them live in Naples.

When the Naples compound is sold, there will still be places for the Donahues and their extended family to get together.

He said the family also owns a 500-acre farm in New Florence, Westmoreland County, where they can have big gatherings. “We’ve had that property since the late 1960s,” Mr. Donahue said.

“It continues to be a place where we gather primarily in the summer. We have family reunions there. So, we’ll get 250 people coming there for weekends in the summer.”

That $295M sales price

Assuming the family receives the asking price for the Naples property, a $295 million sale would set a U.S. record for a residential property, according to the real estate agents involved in the deal.

Since the Feb. 7 sale announcement, several potential buyers have inquired about subdividing Gordon Pointe and buying parts of the compound. But the Donahues believe its best value is being sold in one piece.

“You could never put it back together again if you take it apart now,” Mr. Donahue said. “With the Gulf (of Mexico) on one side and the Bay (of Naples) on the other side of you, it’s just a piece of property you can’t find like that.

“Yes, you could put 5 to 8 lots in there,” he said, adding that the family hopes it’s sold to someone with a vision similar to his dad’s so that “how he saw it would be able to get transferred to the next buyer.”

The property is being brought to market by Coldwell Banker Realty’s Dawn McKenna Group in partnership with the Leighton Candler Team of Corcoran and Rory McMullen from the London-based real estate firm Savills.

Leighton Candler, founder of the New York-based Leighton Candler Team, said many of her ultra high net worth clients are trying to accumulate this kind of property.

“We believe this is a destination property,” she said. “There are people in Naples who would like it. But this is the kind of property where people will travel to go to that place.”

Most families don’t need to accommodate as many blood relatives as the Donahues, but Ms. Candler said luxury home buyers often want to have multiple guest houses, their own three-hole golf course and a tennis court.

Not to mention the boating possibilities.

“For a family that loves boating, and has guests that love boating and fishing, I don’t know many places that have this kind of accommodations for boats.

“This is not just a little place that you pull a boat into. It’s an Army Corps of Engineers Yacht Basin. I don’t know of many private yacht basins,” Ms. Candler said.

In addition to having nine continuous waterfront acres, she said Gordon Pointe has all the advantages of living on a private island without the inconvenience that comes with being on an island.

Clients living on islands tell her, “every time their teenagers want to go meet their friends at Starbucks, they have to call the boat captain or the helicopter captain to get their kids to the mainland.”

The Donahues never had that issue. They could drive to and from the mainland. A gate on the peninsula restricted public access to their property.

“So no one’s driving by checking to see if you’re home,” Ms. Candler said. “You have complete privacy here. You really have an island that’s on the mainland, which is unusual.”

While there are exceptions to the rule, luxury properties typically take longer to sell if for no other reason than there being a way smaller pool of buyers for homes carrying nine-figure price tags.

Steel City roots

The Donahue legacy has become local folklore, beginning with roots in the Steel City.

John Donahue, after serving in the Air Force, teamed up with two Central Catholic high school friends and founded Federated Investors in 1955. Federated Investors became a giant in the financial services industry as a manager of fixed-income and money market funds.

In July 2018, Federated Investors joined forces with Hermes Fund Managers Limited, a pioneer in ESG investing, which rates companies based on environmental and social stances along with financial factors.

Federated Hermes has more than 2,000 employees here and worldwide. The company ranks in the top 7% of equity fund managers in the industry, according to its first quarter 2023 earnings report.

The sale of Gordon Pointe will mark the end of an era for the Donahue family. Letting go of a property that holds 3½ decades of cherished memories is a bittersweet process.

Mostly, Mr. Donahue said he will miss the family gatherings there. The water skiing, playing Wiffle ball with relatives in the front yard and football on the beach.

And being able to walk right behind the house, grab a boat and go deep sea fishing in about five minutes flat.

“It was pretty awesome to be able to do that on a routine basis.”

Tim Grant: tgrant@post-gazette.com or 412-779-5834