Chicago real estate prices are catching a high from newly legal cannabis businesses.
Local investor Centrum just completed a deal that more than tripled the value of a River North building at 60 West Superior Street occupied by a dispensary branded by Verilife, public records show.
The Chicago firm, led by Arthur Slaven and co-founded with Hubbard Street Group’s John McLinden, sold the three-story building, built in 1935 and renovated in 2020, for $14.3 million. A group of investors that share a North Miami Beach address with Glide Capital were the buyers.
It’s becoming evident just how much cannabis-oriented uses have lifted real estate across Chicago as the first round of investors to score such tenants try to cash in on their deals with weed purveyors since it was legalized by Illinois in 2020. Centrum bought the property for just $4 million in 2017, and Verilife opened the River North dispensary in April 2021, boosting the property’s value.
Neither Centrum nor Glide Capital returned requests for comment.
Earlier this summer, local industrial real estate investor Clear Height Properties hired Colliers to sell three Illinois properties leased to cannabis dispensary brand Sunnyside. Two, in the Chicago area, are seeking similarly large profit margins to Centrum’s.
Clear Height is asking nearly $17 million for a dispensary property at 3524 North Clark Street in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood that it bought for $7.5 million in 2020, where the Sunnyside lease lasts through 2030, with 2.5 percent annual rent hikes built in, according to a listing on 420Property.com.
The firm stands to more than quadruple a suburban property’s value, too, too, if Clear Height fetches anywhere close to its asking price of $3.8 million for the Sunnyside-leased dispensary at 7943-7959 West Grand Avenue in Elmwood Park The landlord bought for $850,000 in two separate deals struck in 2015 and 2020.
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