Alinea co-owner asks $6.8M for artsy Old Town home

Nick Kokonas, co-owner of the renowned restaurant Alinea, is selling his artsy Old Town home the old fashioned way after initially attempting an unconventional route.

Kokonas and his wife Dagmara have hired Compass agent Jeff Lowe to market the property at 229 West Eugenie Street and is asking $6.8 million, Crain’s reported. The listing comes five months after Kokonas tried selling it himself, without including an official asking price. 

The no-price, no-agent approach is what Kokonas calls an “inverted commission” model, where the buyer’s agent’s percentage increases with higher offers. He defended this model, stating that he had successfully sold three properties this way in the past, but Kokonas’ busy schedule prompted him to hire Lowe, who’s marketing the home through an agents-only network.

“The method is fine,” Kokonas, whose Alinea is Chicago’s only restaurant with a three-star Michelin rating, told the outlet. “I just don’t have time to run it any longer. I have a project that I’m working on out of town and can’t be (in Old Town) to do showings in a timely manner.”

Even if the home sells for less than ask, it could break the record for priciest single-family transaction in Old Town by a large margin. The current record was set in August 2020, when buyers paid just under $4.4 million for a five-bedroom, 6,700-square-foot home on Menomonee Street.

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The Eugenie Street property stands out with its unique design, as it’s made up of two 19th-century houses connected by a glass bridge, a historic “fire cottage” and a large garage. It features a courtyard-style arrangement, with the four structures surrounding a garden producing grapes and pears, and design elements such as a glass floor providing views of a wine room.

The Kokonases purchased the property for $3.66 million in 2009, the outlet reported, citing Cook County records. The couple and the previous owners, who purchased the site in 1994, performed a number of renovations over the years, totalling more than $10 million in improvements.

— Quinn Donoghue