A former cruise ship executive may soon sail off into the South Florida sunset, ready to sell his waterfront estate for $42 million.
Richard Fain, former CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises, and his wife, Colleen Fain, listed their two-story house in the Gable Estates neighborhood last week. The 10,271-square-foot home has seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, a powder room and a dock on a 130-foot stretch of Biscayne Bay, which feeds into the Atlantic Ocean.
The house, designed by architect Dan Roban in the late 1960s, sits on 2.25 acres and has a tropical modernism air to it, reminiscent of his inspiration, the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Fain retired in 2021 after leading Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises for more than three decades. The company owns several cruise lines, including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity and Silversea.
“I’ve never seen a tropical modern design that seamlessly blends the indoor to the outdoor. You feel it when you walk in,” said Jenna Citron Pinchuk, who is the co-listing agent for the property alongside fellow Compass agent Bea Evelyn Citron. “You see green from every standpoint of the home, from the bathroom to the kitchen. You see coral everywhere. You feel so grounded and warm.”
Its strength may also be its downside for some house hunters. The architecture for the Fain home runs counter to what's trendy today, Pinchuk said. Sugar cube mansions, residences with floor-to-ceiling windows and modern style, dominate what many wealthy buyers want these days.
The Fains bought the house, located at 700 Arvida Parkway, for $650,000 in 1975 and raised their family of four there. Now, the empty nesters plan to downsize into their Coral Gables Regency Park apartment rental later this year or early 2026 once the building is completed.
The Gables Estates pocket is known for its mansions near or on Biscayne Bay. A 10,199-square-foot house sold for $17.25 million at 8805 Arvida Drive in March.
Other deep-pocketed families have called the area home, including a Univision executive, singer Marc Anthony, and the family behind Goya Foods.
Tropical modernism and Mediterranean-style residences are common, but some have been razed in recent years for new builds, including the controversial toppling of an Alfred Browning Parker-designed waterfront house in Gables Estates by a Texas mogul in 2023.
“A couple of things make this property special: Number one, it’s the size of the lot,” Pinchuk said. “It’s also on a unique place on the water. There’s an enclave. You have a wider water view, and you're not staring directly at someone’s property in front of you.”