Franklin Street sells office building near O’Hare for $29M

The real estate investor’s Massachusetts-based Franklin Street Properties netted just over $29 million from the sale of a Class B office building in Chicago’s northwest suburbs.

The 177,000-square-foot property at 50 Northwest Point Boulevard in Elk Grove Village, built in 2000 and located on a 10-acre lot near O’Hare International Airport, sold for $29.1 million earlier this month, the firm announced.

Franklin Street did not disclose a buyer or return a request for comment.

The $164-per-square-foot price for the single-tenant building occupied by Citibank is slightly higher than a recent loss the firm took on an Evanston office building, selling the 195,000-square-foot property at 909 Davis Street to the Lakewood, New Jersey-based Red River Asset Management for $27.9 million, down from the more than $35 million it paid for the property in 2011.

Franklin Street expects to record a gain of about $8.4 million in the first quarter of 2023 in connection with the sale of the Elk Grove Village property, the investor said in a press release. Carter, the company’s chairman and CEO, said his REIT plans to use most of the capital for debt reduction.

The two recent Chicagoland sales means Carter’s firm no longer has any Chicago-area holdings, according to its website. Its portfolio includes properties in Minnesota, Indiana, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Suburban Chicago set a new record for office vacancies at the end of 2022, with the amount of available office space ballooning to almost 27.9 percent, according to JLL. That was up from the previous record of 27.3 percent set at the end of the third quarter, with the suburban office vacancy rate rising for eight consecutive quarters and rising to more than 22 percent higher than at the beginning of the pandemic.