A penthouse condo at the 101-story St. Regis tower that was part of a bulk investment by a firm tied to a Mexican denim magnate sold quietly for $7.5 million last month in an off-market deal.
The four-bedroom, 6,300-square-foot 79th-floor penthouse sold on Aug. 1, property records show. It was bought under a land trust that obscures the buyer’s identity. The price tag makes it among the priciest units sold at the Jeanne Gang-designed skyscraper at 363 East Wacker Drive.
The seller of the penthouse was an LLC linked to GD Holdings, the real estate arm of Grupo Denim, a Mexican clothing company run by Salomon Juan Marcos Villarreal. The firm spent $117.5 million in 2024 to buy 84 condos at the tower that its developer had yet to sell.
The latest sale is at least the fifth of GD Holdings’ units to trade for more than $5 million this year amid downtown Chicago’s struggling luxury condo market. It has sold at least 24 other units at the tower, property records show. Concerns about crime and fewer in-office workers after the pandemic have depressed condo values in some downtown segments and many units throughout the city have sold at a loss.
But the market may be poised for a turnaround. Rafael Murillo, a Compass agent who has brokered several deals in the St. Regis Tower, said buyers are showing renewed interest in downtown properties, seeing an opportunity to get a discount before the recovery. Newer buildings like the St. Regis are moving units quickly, even if they’re selling at lower prices than they could have fetched a few years ago, he said.
“Right now is a great time to buy,” said Murillo, who wasn’t involved in the 79th floor unit sale. “Affluent buyers are taking advantage of these opportunities, knowing that in the next few years, the downtown market is likely to see steady, healthy growth. We’re in the recovery phase.”
The condo sold without being publicly listed, so there is little information about the unit’s price history and whether real estate agents represented the buyer or seller in the deal. An archived version of the St. Regis Residences webpage shows the 79th floor unit was listed at just under $9.8 million in May, which is about 25 percent higher than the final $7.5 million sale price. The webpage also showed a similar unit on the 82nd floor listed at $10.5 million. That unit is no longer listed for sale on the website, but, so far, there has been no sale of that condo recorded in Cook County property records.
Another penthouse with a similar floor plan, on the 73rd floor, is currently listed on the website at $8.25 million.
The St. Regis’s developer, Magellan Development Group, which remained in charge of marketing the property after GD Holdings’ bulk purchase, didn’t respond to requests for comment. And Magellan’s sales chief Leila Zammatta did not respond to a request for comment. GD Holdings could not be reached.
The priciest deal by far among the luxury residences at the St. Regis came in 2022, when Mexican mining CEO German Larrea spent $20 million for a two-floor, 10,000 square-foot penthouse across the building’s 71st and 72nd floors. At least three other units have traded for more than $8 million: The 76th floor unit sold for $8.3 million in 2025, the 91st floor sold for $9.2 million and the 87th floor sold for $9 million, both in 2022.
The 78th floor penthouse sold for $7 million in 2024, a loss for the sellers who purchased it at $8.2 million.