Jose Cuervo Parent Company Snaps Up Second Troubled Downtown Office Property
The real estate arm of Jose Cuervo tequila’s parent company has scooped up its second cut-rate downtown office property in a year and a half, acquiring 300 South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago out of foreclosure for nearly $60M below its 2017 purchase price — and from the same lender that made that original loan.
In the latest example of the city’s plunging downtown office values, Miami-based Agave Holdings is finalizing a deal to acquire the 35-story, 535K SF property for about $96.5M, a 38% drop from the $155M a joint venture of Chicago-based Golub & Co. and Boston-based Alcion Ventures paid for the tower six years ago.
Deutsche Bank, the lender for the Golub-Alcion venture, will provide new financing to Agave as part of a “stapled financing” approach that allows the bank to recoup most or all of an original loan rather than take formal possession and bet on a new buyer securing financing elsewhere in a tough environment, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, which first reported the pending transaction. The $96.5M price tag is the value of the mortgage remaining.
Per Crain’s, a completed sale would wipe out all of the venture’s equity, in addition to $10M in renovations and upgrades Golub and Alcion completed over the course of their stewardship of the building.
The building is 75% leased, the outlet reported, citing CoStar.
300 South Wacker is the second building Agave has purchased for a steep discount since early 2022. In January of that year, it paid around $83M for a 28-story building at 225 West Washington St., well shy of the $95M mark investors expected it to go for when it went up for sale in fall 2021. Agave is the real estate investment arm of the Beckmann family, which owns Jose Cuervo.
