This Week's Chicago Deal Sheet
Oxford Capital Group acquired from Walton Street Capital and AJ Capital Partners the 247-room luxury hotel Thompson Chicago in the Gold Coast neighborhood. The firm’s wholly owned affiliate, Oxford Hotels & Resorts, also took over management of the property. Oxford owns a number of other Chicago hotels, including Godfrey Hotel and LondonHouse Chicago, among others.
Thompson Chicago, which will remain affiliated with Hyatt’s hotel brand Thompson Hotels, opened its doors in 2013. It is at 21 East Bellevue Place and Rush Street, near the Magnificent Mile shopping district.
“We believe the timing of this transaction, coinciding with Chicago’s post-pandemic recovery progress, is auspicious,” Oxford Hotels & Resorts CEO John Rutledge said in a press release. “We are also sanguine that our national experience, as well as our longstanding history in Chicago and its various submarkets, will position Oxford and its investors for a successful outcome.”
This is Oxford’s 15th hotel project in Chicago. The parties involved did not disclose the price paid, but sources told Crain’s Chicago Business that Oxford plunked down somewhere between $70M and $75M for the property. That’s fairly close to the previous owners’ $65M mortgage, a sign that, like other recent hotel buyers, the lingering coronavirus pandemic led Oxford to approach this transaction with caution.
EXECS
Waterton hired Kate Moran as vice president of portfolio management. She will focus on investment strategies for a select group of the firm’s multifamily communities. Prior to joining Waterton, she was a vice president, asset manager for Harrison Street Real Estate Capital.
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Duke Realty Corp., an Indianapolis-based logistics REIT, hired Josh Bauer as its Chicago-based vice president of leasing and development. Bauer will negotiate leases from new and existing tenants in the company's Chicagoland industrial portfolio while also seeking new development opportunities. Bauer joins Duke from Opus Development Co., where he worked in its development operations for four-and-a-half years.
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Chicago general contractor Summit Design + Build hired Larry Blouin as its new vice president. He will assist in the day-to-day management of the firm’s operations, overseeing project management, field operations and project staffing. Blouin most recently served as vice president of operations for Powers & Sons Construction and is also the former executive director for capital project delivery at the University of Chicago.
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Steve Milenkov joined Cushman & Wakefield as senior managing director and city leader to lead asset services in the Chicago region. The company currently manages approximately 26M SF of office, industrial and retail space in the Chicago area. Milenkov joins Cushman & Wakefield from Slate Asset Management where he was director, asset management, responsible for oversight of Slate’s U.S. Office REIT.
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Greenstone Partners hired Keely Faris as an investment analyst supporting the investment sales division. She will help analyze a variety of commercial real estate assets spanning the Midwest. The firm also hired Joe Bono, who serves as an associate in investment sales. He will focus on net-leased investments nationally. Prior to joining Greenstone, Bono was a net-lease broker at Marcus & Millichap.
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Mortenson brought Maggie Beckley on board as healthcare development executive. A former Goldie B. Wolfe Miller Women in Real Estate Initiative Scholar at Roosevelt University, Beckley also recently served as director of real estate at Advocate Aurora Health.
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JLL Hotels & Hospitality added Mike Wernet as a senior vice president, asset management. The Chicago-based Wernet will oversee the firm’s portfolio of full- and select-service hotels located in markets throughout the U.S. He recently served as a vice president of finance, planning and analytics for RLJ Lodging Trust. In addition, Wernet spent 25 years at White Lodging Services Corp., most recently as the vice president of asset management and capital administration.
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Entre Commercial Realty named Rachel Peck president of its property management company, Entre Asset Management. EAM provides property and asset management services to a portfolio of industrial, office and retail properties for both institutional and private investor clients. She joined Entre in early 2020. Prior to joining Entre, Peck served as director of asset management for ML Realty Partners where she oversaw an industrial portfolio made up of 15M SF across the Chicago and Dallas markets.
SALES
A local real estate owner sold for $8.9M a single tenant net-leased industrial property at 3411 Woodhead Drive in north suburban Northbrook. The 117K SF building is located in the 1.8M SF Sky Harbor Industrial Park near Interstate 294 and I-94 and is leased to Atlas Fibre. Randy Blankstein and Jimmy Goodman of The Boulder Group represented the seller in the transaction.
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Cougle Commission Co., a family-based poultry processor, sold the land at 345 North Aberdeen St. in Fulton Market to Sterling Bay. The property includes a 20K SF building. The sale price was undisclosed. Colliers International Chicago’s Mike Senner, Vern Schultz and Peter Bourke arranged the land sale. In April, the company moved its operations to a 37K SF food processing facility at 2801 South Ashland Ave.
LEASES
Waller Helms Advisors signed a new long-term lease and will relocate from its current headquarters at 205 West Wacker Drive into 13K SF at 225 West Wacker Drive in Q3 2021. Savills’ Eric Feinberg and Isabel Preskill represented the company in lease negotiations with owner Spear Street Capital. Waller Helms recently returned to the office and sought a move-in-ready space with minimal improvements. The 225 West Wacker location was partially built out with a mix of private offices and furnished open, collaborative areas.
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Five tenants signed new leases or renewals totaling 35K SF at 570 Lake Cook Road in north suburban Deerfield. Bradford Allen Investment Advisors recently acquired the 137K SF office property and Bradford Allen’s Joel Berger handled negotiations for the firm.
Banner Real Estate Group signed a new lease for nearly 3K SF and was represented by Randy Bowles and Steve Levitas of Newmark. Align Business Finance signed a lease expansion and renewal for 5K SF and was represented by Sam Grossman of The Fairchild Group. Other completed lease renewals included: DD&A for 2K SF; Sedgwick Claims Management Services, represented by Paul Diederich of CBRE, for more than 9K SF; and Vail Systems, represented by Dan McCarthy and Phil Geiger of JLL, for 16K SF.
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Peak Properties has been appointed to lease and manage 1344 North Dearborn St., a 94-unit, 20-story condo deconversion in the Gold Coast neighborhood. The new owner, New Jersey-based Strategic Properties of North America, plans to invest more than $3M toward renovating both the individual units and common areas.
CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT
Duke Realty began construction of a 371K SF speculative logistics development at 10000 Woodward Ave. in suburban Woodridge, the former site of a movie theater. The planned facility will have 36-foot clear height, and Duke expects to complete it next January. The listing brokers are Jason West and Sean Henrick with Cushman & Wakefield.
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Parkline Chicago developer Moceri + Roszak completed construction on the building’s 24 condominium residences and will now lease those units as apartments to capitalize on the downtown’s booming rental market. Located at 60 East Randolph St. in Chicago’s Loop, the 26-story building was completed in April and the 189 apartments on floors 4-19 reached full lease-up in July.
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Newcastle Limited topped off its mixed-use project at 1210 North State Parkway in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. The 12-story project consists of 89 apartments, 18K SF of retail space and on-site parking. Power Construction is the general contractor and CallisonRKTL is the architect. Newcastle Limited plans to open the building, which will be leased and managed by Reside Living, next spring. The company has also retained Canvas Real Estate Collective to lease the retail space.
THIS AND THAT
The Chicago metro area had its biggest quarter ever for apartment leasing, with more than 10K units rented in Q2 2021, according to a report from RealPage. The researchers attribute the jump to accelerating employment growth, which spurred household formation and housing absorption. Jobs in high-paying sectors are nearing or exceeding pre-pandemic levels in many U.S. markets, leading to strong apartment demand from affluent renters.
