Tall & Urban News

It has been reported that Fairpoint Development, a Chicago investor known for big real estate projects in emerging areas, has a deal to buy a 50-story office tower at 161 N. Clark Street in Chicago in the center of the city’s long-established Loop business district, across the street from a high-profile building that Google plans to buy and occupy. The building has nearly 1.1 million-square-feet (102,193 square meters) of space.  

The deal is preliminary and could still not go through amid a shaky office leasing, investment, and lending market. An exact price could not be determined, but it is expected to be far below the value of a $230 million loan the tower’s longtime owner — South Korea’s postal system, advised by CBRE Investment Management — borrowed from Societe Generale in 2018. That came about five years after the Korea Post venture bought the tower. The 161 N. Clark loan appears to have matured in August, a few months after the tower went on the market for sale, according to Cook County property records. Societe Generale filed a foreclosure suit in October, the Real Deal Chicago previously reported. If Farpoint lines up an investment partner and completes the deal, it is expected to follow the recent trend of lenders providing financing to new owners to limit losses on the previous loan.

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