Lakefront Lake Forest Estate Sold for $5M in Off-Market Deal

A Lake Forest estate that once served as Edith Rockefeller McCormick’s country home traded hands for $5 million in an off-market sale this week. The sale came shortly before before the home was set to be listed publicly for an asking price of $6 million.

The more than 10,600-square-foot home at 663 Circle Lane on Chicago’s North Shore sold for $471 per square foot. The property’s sellers were planning to list the home early next year for $1 million more than they got for it, but opted for a quicker sale instead, according to private listing information shared with The Real Deal.

The home is owned by trusts established in the names of Darlene Bobb and Robert J Bobb. They signed a mortgage for a $2.6 million loan in 2020 when purchasing the home from Michael and Eva Losacco.

The Bobbs bought the home for $3.7 million, a 45 percent reduction in its original asking price of $6.7 million when the Losaccos first put it on the market in 2015, according to public listing information and a 2015 Crain’s article.

Robert J. Bobb is a former federal prosecutor and co-founder of the firm Cardinal Growth, which was seized by the federal government in 2011 after it failed to repay $21.4 million in taxpayer dollars that it borrowed to invest in various companies.

Robert J. Bobb was a friend of former Mayor Richard M. Daley and Bobb’s company, Cardinal Growth, funded various City Hall projects involving the former mayor’s son, according to 2016 reporting by the Chicago Sun-Times. After the fallout, Bobb agreed to pay $1.5 million to the U.S. Small Business Administration and to cooperate with federal regulators, to avoid a court proceeding.

The property’s sellers were represented by Marlene Rubenstein and Laura Kerstein of Rubenstein Fox Team at Baird & Warner. When asked about the deal, Rubenstein said, “we maintain the privacy and confidentiality out of respect for both the seller who we represent and the buyers.”

The buyers, who remain unidentified by public records, were represented by Branislav Simic of Pivot Properties, Inc. Simic declined to comment on the deal Friday.

The Georgian-style mansion on Circle Lane has seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and three half-baths. The main home was built in 1983, but the property includes the original teahouse built for Edith Rockefeller McCormick, the daughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

The Circle Lane home sits on 2.5 lakefront acres of the historic “Villa Turicum” estate, which once spanned 300 acres and was designed for Edith and her husband Harold McCormick, son of International Harvester founder Cyrus McCormick. Nearly a century later, it has been subdivided and redeveloped as the North Shore of today has seen increasing demand, particularly for lakefront properties such as the Bobbs’ former home.

When it was finished, circa 1918, Villa Turicum’s main home had 44 rooms and 15 baths as well as 21 garages and a swimming pool right at the foot of the bluff, according to historical information provided by the listing agent.

Just up the road from the Bobbs’ Circle Lane mansion, another property that was part of the Villa Turicum estate and today holds a 15,000-square-foot mansion with garage space for 22 cars, listed for nearly $28 million earlier this year, but hasn’t yet sold and was no longer viewable on public listing websites Friday. That estate also boasts an original relic from Villa Turicum in the form of a grand formal staircase descending down the bluff to the lakeshore.

Low inventory levels on the North Shore lakefront this year have brought even higher demand, and properties that are priced right are selling within days, or even before they hit the market. While a handful of North Shore home listings have asked for more than $10 million this year in an unusual surge of ultra-luxury offerings, including several in Lake Forest, most have remained on the market for months so far.

However, the Circle Lane home was the third in Lake Forest this year to sell for $5 million or more, matching the three sold above the price mark last year in the northern suburb, according to public listing data.