CHICAGO—The Chicago office market continues to prove quite attractive to out-of-town investors, including many from overseas. GLL Real Estate Partners, a Munich-based firm, has just completed the purchase of One11 West Illinois, a class A mixed-use office and retail building in River North, the city's most popular office submarket. The seller was the Chicago-based Alter Group, which developed the building in 2008. Its affiliate, Alter Asset Management, will continue on as property manager for GLL.
“One11 West Illinois is a very efficient building, built to the highest standards by a quality developer to provide modern, collaborative space solutions in one of Chicago's most desirable neighborhoods,” says Christian Goebel of GLL. “We like the location, the building and the quality of the tenants and believe this is an excellent addition to our portfolio in North America.”
“We had interest from Middle Eastern, German, Chinese, South Korean, Swiss, Israeli and Canadian investors—including sovereign wealth, pension funds, reinsurance companies, high-net-worth families—and also domestic pension funds, insurance companies, net lease REITs and investment funds,” says James Clark, managing principal of EnTrust Realty Advisors LLC, which represented Alter. “Ultimately, we selected GLL based on their thorough underwriting of the asset; their understanding of the vertical subdivision ownership structure; their appreciation of the value of retaining Alter as property manager; and of course their recognition of the unique value of this property as one of the few mid-size Class A office properties in River North.”
The overall class A office vacancy rate is about 6%, making it the submarket with the lowest office vacancy rate in the Chicago CBD.
The 227,604 square-foot building has 141,957 square feet of multi-tenant office space as well as 10,243 square feet of ground floor retail space. The Erikson Institute, which offers masters and doctoral programs in early childhood development, owns about 75,000 square feet of the building.
Salesforce.com anchors the multi-tenant office space and WeWork, a New York-based provider of co-working space, is the second largest tenant. The retail tenants include Roka Akor, a highly-rated sushi restaurant.
In January, GLL completed the purchase of 550 W. Adams, an office tower anchored by the global headquarters of USG Corporation.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
