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CHICAGO-CIM Group said today that it has closed its purchase of the controversial Block 37 retail center here in the Central Loop, a new five-story property that is 30% leased. Bank of America, which took over the property, reportedly sold the center to the Los Angeles-based firm for $84 million.
Locally based Joseph Freed & Associates lost the center after it couldn’t pay its construction loan to a prior lender taken over by Bank of America. Tenants such as Anthropologie, Sephora, Disney and Puma occupied the 275,000-square-foot center, but Freed fought an acrimonious legal battle to keep the site, likely keeping tenants away from the fracas.
The property has had numerous stop and go projects proposed during the past few decades. At the height of the Chicago retail market, the Freed project and a 17-story office building were built on the site. Parsippany, NJ-based Prudential Real Estate Investors bought the office building for $183.5 million in November.
In a statement today, CIM said it plans to lease the balance of the building to national and local retailers. The company touted its experience in repositioning other retail properties such as Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA and the Hollywood & Highland Center property in Los Angeles. A CIM spokeswoman tells GlobeSt.com that the company is in the process of hiring a local brokerage firm as the landlord’s representative, but says she cannot comment further.
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