One of the developers that is redeveloping the Thompson Center into Google’s future Chicago office plans to buy a second Helmut Jahn-designed office building in the city.
Veteran Chicago developer Mike Reschke’s Prime Group has a contract to buy the 40-story, high-vacancy building at 55 W. Monroe St. in the Loop business district, he confirmed.
Reschke declined to comment on the price, which people familiar with the deal said is close to $25 million.
If the deal closes as expected, that would be a huge price cut from the $243.25 million that Canada’s Manulife paid for it during a surging investment sales market in 2014.
The pending sale is the latest example of older, high-vacancy office buildings losing significant value in Chicago and other major cities amid historically low demand for corporate space.
Yet Prime Group has a long history of finding new value in older-generation offices, often by converting portions of properties to uses such as hospitality or multifamily.
In the case of the Thompson Center, Prime Group is gutting the property to give the former offices for Illinois state employees a new life as corporate space that will be owned and occupied by Google.
Prime Group and Capri Investment Group are leading the development, with Google planning to buy the property and move workers there next year. CoStar News previously reported that Morningstar is in talks to move its headquarters to the redeveloped building as a tenant paying rent to Google.
Like the Thompson Center, 55 W. Monroe was designed by Jahn, the German-born, Chicago-based architect who died in 2021.
Reschke said his firm has yet to decide whether part of the glassy, 46-year-old structure at 55 W. Monroe could be converted to new uses.
JLL brokers have been marketing the tower to buyers interested in switching some blocks of office space into as many as 532 hotel rooms or 296 apartments, according to a brochure on the property.
Manulife did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pending sale.
The 815,074-square-foot building is more than 80% vacant, according to materials from JLL, which began marketing it for sale in February.
Reschke said it’s possible the building could have a mix of office, residential and hotel space down the line.
“It could accommodate all three uses if that’s the best way to go,” Reschke told CoStar News. “We’re not sure yet. For now, we’re just focused on maintaining it as a Class A office building.”
Financial district developer
Prime Group previously has developed multiple hotels in historic buildings on LaSalle Street, the city’s longtime financial center.
Prime and Capri are in the process of converting part of the office building at 111 W. Monroe St. into 345 apartments, backed by $40 million in city subsidies designed to help create more affordable housing in the Loop business district. They are now seeking a $50 million TIF loan to convert the rest of the building into a 308-roomW hotel, Crain's Chicago Business reported last week.
As part of the same city-backed initiative, Prime Group has $26 million in tax increment financing funding to convert parts of 208 S. LaSalle St. into 168 apartments.
The firm also bought Cboe Global Markets’ vacant former headquarters building at 400 S. LaSalle in 2024 with plans to convert it into a data center. After boosting power to the building and taking other steps to ready the data storage project, Prime Group flipped that building to a Virginia-based data center developer for $40 million last year.
For the record
The seller is represented by JLL brokers Jaime Fink, Bruce Miller and Sam DiFrancesca.