The Rolls-Royce of parking garages has sold for more than $12 million, with the quirky, Stanley Tigerman-designed structure in Chicago’s Loop business district changing hands for the first time in nearly a decade.
The nine-story parking building at 60 E. Lake St., often referred to as the Rolls-Royce Garage by locals, was sold earlier this month for just under $12.4 million, according to Cook County property records.
That included the buyer, Toronto-based parking facilities investor Clermont, assuming a loan with a remaining balance of $7.8 million from seller InterPark Holdings, according to property records.
The price was lower than the $17 million that an InterPark venture paid in September 2015, property records show.
The teal-colored, art deco structure is a rare example of a parking garage, typically a utilitarian property type, turning heads since it opened in 1986.
The front of the garage resembles the grille and fenders of a classic luxury car, using vertical aluminum strips. Round windows on the top level and a small statue atop the garage serve as the headlights and hood ornament, with awnings over the entrance and exit forming the shape of tires.
The Lake Street building includes 210 parking spaces, according to CoStar data. There also is ground-floor retail, including a space recently vacated by Billy Goat Tavern.
Chicago-based InterPark is the largest owner-operator of parking real estate in the U.S., according to the firm’s website.
Canada’s Clermont was formed last year with investment house Ardian and parking investor Indigo Group forming a joint venture to invest in parking properties in Canada, led by former Imperial Parking, or Impark, executive Gordon Craig.
It’s unclear whether the Chicago deal is the firm’s first purchase in the U.S., and Clermont did not respond to a request for comment from CoStar News. InterPark also did not respond to a request for comment.
Tigerman was part of the so-called “Chicago Seven” group of architects known for challenging design traditions.
The Chicago-based architect, who died in 2019 at age 88, also designed the Anti-Cruelty Society office in Chicago whose exterior resembles a dog, and the so-called Animal Crackers house in north suburban Highland Park, Illinois, thought to resemble a box of the popular snack. Tigerman also designed the recently shuttered Hard Rock Café in River North.
Chicago’s postmodern parking garage came about when developer Ron Grais held a contest to design something unusual.
It still stands out today, just a short walk from Millennium Park, the Riverwalk and Magnificent Mile shopping.
“I wanted a garage that didn’t look like a garage,” Grais told the Chicago Tribune a week after it opened in 1986. “I suppose it’s whimsical, but it gave me a chance to be a little less serious than you have to be when you’re building an office building,” he added.
Although the building became known as the Rolls-Royce Garage, Tigerman told the newspaper that he studied dozens of luxury vehicles from the 1920s and ’30s to form the design.
“Rollses, Mercedeses, Bentleys, you name it,” Tigerman said at the time.