Downtown office tower trades for $412M

Bids reportedly ranged from $415 million to $425 million

500 West Monroe Street and Spear Street Capital founder John Grassi (Credit: Google Maps)
500 West Monroe Street and Spear Street Capital founder John Grassi (Credit: Google Maps)

The numbers are in: Spear Street Capital paid $412 million for a West Loop office building in one of the city’s biggest investment sales deals of the year.

When it was reported in October that Spear Street was under contract to buy the 46-story 967,000-square-foot building at 500 West Monroe Street from Georgia-based Piedmont Office Realty Trust, the sale price was unknown, but bids reportedly ranged from $415 million to $425 million, putting the sale price somewhere around $440 a foot. Records show it closed for slightly lower than estimated, at about $426 a foot.

Piedmont initially sought upward of $490 million when the building was put on the market in May.

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Piedmont, which was once the mezzanine lender on the property, took full ownership in 2011 at foreclosure auction. At the time, Piedmont valued the property at $227.5 million.

Piedmont put $84 million worth of renovations into the building, according to Crain’s. The real estate investment trust also added some large tenants who signed big leases, including Motorola Solutions and GE Healthcare, which moved from offices in the suburbs.

Spear Street Capital, based in San Francisco, has interests in about two dozen office properties throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.