Downtown Museum Property Auctioned Off

CHICAGO—Officials from Transwestern’s Chicago office say they have just facilitated through an auction a 15-year sale-leaseback of the Chicago Loop’s 175 W. Washington St., a 20,305 square foot building occupied by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, to an undisclosed buyer. Transwestern managing directors Marc Imrem and Andrew Watson represented NMHM in the transaction and found that securing a buyer for a property occupied by a nonprofit museum presented a few challenges.

“We began to market it in a traditional manner,” Imrem tells GlobeSt.com, and several REITs were very interested in a 15-year lease located in the heart of downtown. However, once these groups did the underwriting, they backed out. “We had that happen twice. The nonprofit museum is a startup with no real revenue or operating history,” and therefore, “it didn’t meet their parameters. In order to overcome the lack of credit, we brought the asset to auction, enabling NMHM to achieve maximum value while ensuring a successful close.”