CHICAGO-The Farbman Group, through subsidiary 209 Jax Owner LLC, has purchased 209 W. Jackson in the South Loop. The Southfield, MI-based firm took over the more than $12 million in debt owed by locally based M&J Wilkow on the 150,000-square-foot office.
The class B structure, also known as the McKinlock building, was designed by architect Charles Sumner Frost in 1898. Andy Farbman, president of the Chicago branch of his family firm, tells GlobeSt.com that the property is 100% leased by tenants such as ADP, Future Path and Illinois Stock Transfer. The bottom floor has 10,000 square feet of retail with tenants Starbucks, Subway and Panda Express.
Service Employees International Union, also a tenant in the building, intends to vacate about 25,000 square feet this year. Farbman says he knew that would happen when he bought the property. “We look at it as an opportunity,” he says. “We believe multitenant B buildings like this are functional, and it’s in a great location, so it should lease well. We feel a lot of users will like this 12,000-square-foot floor plate, and old-style huge windows.”
He knows something about older buildings, having purchased and leased up four buildings in the Chicago Loop, including the Bell Federal building at 79 W. Monroe and the 200,000-square-foot Randolph-Wells building in the West Loop for $13 million in 2011. “It takes a special skill set to maintain and operate these historic buildings,” Farbman says. “We will continue this pace of buying these buildings in the West Loop for some time.”
The McKinlock was valued at $16.4 million in October 2006 during its appraisal for a CMBS loan, sources say. It’s not clear why M&J Wilkow, a firm with 27 office and retail properties, wanted to sell the building; a company representative did not return a call for comment. Farbman says he may hire the previous owner to continue to lease the property.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
