Thad Wong, Mike Golden sell @properties’ Streeterville office building

Thad Wong and Mike Golden, bosses of Chicago’s top residential brokerage @properties, are selling some of the real estate firm’s office space in Streeterville.

Two LLCs controlled by Wong and Golden sold the building to a local, unidentified buyer for $6.2 million, though @properties will continue to lease space in the 29,000-square-foot mixed-use building. The deal closed Dec. 27, and a local investor who isn’t yet identified by property records was the buyer.

Brant Sichko, a broker with Baird & Warner, represented the buyer. @properties commercial agents Mike Rourke and Dan Stratis represented the sellers. Rourke said the deal was a standard sale-leaseback, in which the sellers trade the property but lease it back from the new owner.

Wong and Golden bought the property for $3.6 million in 2005, records show.

The deal is also not the first recent sale of real estate held personally by the pair. Miami-based apartment developer Crescent Heights is in the process of buying a Fulton Market development site from Golden and Wong at 420 North May Street, where the builder has planned what would be the West Loop’s tallest tower, rising 52 stories with nearly 600 units, if approved.

The five-story Streeterville building, at 212 East Ohio Street, is one block east of the Magnificent Mile. The building is fully leased and its other tenant is Central City Productions, a television production company.

Baird & Warner, which predominantly handles residential transactions, had represented the buyer on two previous residential transactions, but this was the buyer’s first commercial purchase.

“In a commercial market where less office space is changing hands, and institutional buyers are waiting on the sidelines, smaller investors are getting opportunities because the market just isn’t very crowded,” Sichko said in a statement. “As a Chicagoan, my client always dreamed of owning investment properties in downtown Chicago, and it was a pleasure to help them expand their real estate portfolio with the acquisition of a fully-leased commercial property steps from the Mag Mile.”

The move comes as office and retail space in downtown Chicago continues to struggle post-pandemic, with more than a fifth of office space in the area vacant as of last quarter, an all-time high.