Osso Pays $73M as Stockbridge Cashes Out of Villa Park

Stockbridge Capital’s selloff of Chicagoland holdings was extended and looks to have yielded a financial win for the landlord with a multifamily deal in the western suburbs.

New York-based Osso Capital, led by former Blackstone managing director Olivia John, paid $73 million to San Francisco-based Stockbridge for the 344-unit Ovaltine Court apartment complex in Villa Park, according to DuPage County records.

At about $212,000 per unit, the deal appears to have made about $13 million for Stockbridge, after the firm paid $58 million to buy the property in 2013 following its redevelopment into housing from a historic Ovaltine factory. Stockbridge spent $1.6 million on upgrades and unit renovations in recent years, according to marketing materials prepared by JLL, which listed the property on behalf of Stockbridge.

Osso’s John declined to comment on the transaction, and Stockbridge didn’t return a request for comment.

The Ovaltine factory was the centerpiece of economic activity in Villa Park from when it was built in 1917 to when the factory closed in 1985, and manufacturing of the sweet drink was relocated to Minneapolis.

While John’s firm is relatively new having been established in 2020, Stockbridge is advancing an exit from Chicagoland real estate with the deal. Since December 2022, Stockbridge has sold $120 million-worth of area property, including more than $100 million in industrial properties plus a $21 million retail asset in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood that it traded to Ben Ashkenazy.

Stockbridge bought the Ovaltine Court property from a joint venture that redeveloped the factory — Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. and the AFL-CIO Building Trust of Washington, D.C. — and finished the adaptive reuse project in 2000.

The Ovaltine property isn’t the only multifamily in Chicago’s western suburbs to change hands in recent months.

In September, Trinity Property Consultants completed the second-largest deal in the suburbs this year. The California-based firm with ties to the large apartments landlord FPA Multifamily paid $96 million for the 558-unit Westmont Village apartment complex at 6715 Lake Shore Drive in nearby Westmont. That’s about $172,000 per unit.

Nuveen’s real estate arm made the largest suburban Chicago apartments purchase so far this year when it dropped $103 million on a 336-unit multifamily property in Vernon Hills, which is north of Chicago in Lake County. And Ohio-based Connor Group has hired CBRE to sell Wheaton 121, a 306-unit luxury apartment complex at 121 North Cross Street in Wheaton, also in DuPage County.