Firm to buy office portion of 1 N. State
Crain's Chicago Business |
May 10, 2007
A low-profile New York real estate investment firm has a deal to buy the office
portion of the former Wieboldt’s Building on State Street, where the vacancy
rate has stubbornly remained
above 50% despite the broader upturn in the downtown office leasing market.
In an on-again, off-again deal, White Plains, N.Y.-based Stonewater Partners has
agreed to buy the top floors of the 16-story structure at 1 N. State St.,
according to sources familiar with the
transaction.
The exact price could not be determined, but sources said it is in the low
$30-million range. That would put the price in the rough range of $50 to $60 a
square foot, based on a measurement of
523,400 square feet of office space.
Jeffrey Toporek, a principal in Stonewater, and a representative of Irving,
Texas-based Archon Group L.P., which owns the building, could not be reached for
comment.
The transaction does not include the retail space in 1 N. State, whose tenants
include Filene’s Basement. Archon sold off that space separately in 2004.
The building is about 48% leased to tenants such as the International Academy of
Design & Technology Ltd. and the National Opinion Research Center Inc. With its
large floors of about
47,000 square feet, 1 N. State has typically appealed to tenants looking to
house large administrative operations.
But Stonewater is likely betting that it can boost the occupancy rate with more
aggressive ownership, taking advantage of the continued revival of the downtown
office market.
Built in 1912, the terra-cotta clad building was designed by Holabird & Roche,
which also designed the City Hall-County Building and 2 N. State St., which
currently houses a Sears store
and is across the street from the former Wieboldt’s Building.
Stonewater, formed in 2003, apparently has a taste for historic structures. In
August, the firm bought three of the best-known historic buildings in downtown
Milwaukee — the Mitchell,
Mackie and Loyalty buildings. The price was $7.2 million, or about $44 per
square foot, according to report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
This isn’t Stonewater’s first Chicago-area investment. In 2004, the firm paid
$10.55 million for a 127,300-square-foot building at 777 Big Timber Road in
Elgin that is leased to Verizon Wireless.
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