Thad Wong Goes to Court Over Development Dispute

A dispute over a Lincoln Park property has triggered accusations of wrongdoing between the co-CEO of Chicago’s largest residential brokerage and a pair of commercial real estate developers.

@properties Christie’s International Real Estate co-CEO Thad Wong and North Park Ventures co-founders Robert Sekula and Eric Turrin each filed competing lawsuits accusing the other of breaching contracts over the property at 1628 North Wells Street. Both parties are asking that their joint LLC be dissolved and the building be sold, with the proceeds after paying off the debt being split equally between them, and asking the judge to order the other party to pay their attorneys’ fees.

But they’re at odds over the structure, price and broker to use for the deal.

The dispute came to a head after a plan to develop a seven-story, 48-unit building with retail fell apart and the owners attempted to sell the property.

Wong has accused Sekula and Turrin of entering into a listing agreement for the property, and rejecting an offer, without his approval. He also accuses them of listing the property for higher than market value to coax other investors to sell their shares to Sekula and Turrin.

Sekula and Turrin, in turn, have accused Wong of demanding that @properties be used to list the building, trying to use an associate to purchase the building and backing out after making an offer to buy them out of the property.

Sekula said he and Turrin are pushing back against many of Wong’s claims; “specifically, we dispute that we breached the operating agreement for 1628 North Wells LLC or violated any duties owed to Mr. Wong,” he wrote in an email to The Real Deal.

Sekula and Turrin’s attorney, Tim Herman, said they “stand by the allegations made in our complaint.” Wong’s attorney, Aaron Stanton, denied the allegations made by Sekula and Turrin when speaking with TRD.

Wong, Sekula and Turrin formed an LLC in 2018 to purchase the property that currently includes retail and four residential units for $2.4 million. Wong owned 50 percent through his trust, and Sekula and Turin, along with other investors, owned 50 percent through 1628 North Wells NPV LLC.

The partnership’s plan failed after the ward alderman, Brian Hopkins, denied their rezoning request. The income from the existing units is not covering the costs for operation and debt service on the $1.58 million mortgage on the building, and the property generated a net loss of $57,000 in 2024, according to the complaints.

As they considered selling the building last year, Turrin and Sekula retained two brokers to assess the property’s value. The brokers gave valuations of $1.6 million and $1.8 million, according to both complaints.

Last month, Turrin and Sekula worked with a broker at Interra Realty to gauge interest in the property, marketing it internally for $2.1 million. Sekula and Turrin said in their filing they did not enter into a fully executed listing agreement. But Wong’s complaint claims they signed a listing agreement without his approval in breach of their contract.

Wong’s attorney denied that Wong insisted on using his firm to market the property. He said he only requested that @properties be used as the broker. In an email he shared with TRD, Stanton asked the partners’ attorney, “Would they agree to have @properties’ commercial list?”

“I asked if they would be amenable to that,” Stanton said. “That’s hardly demanding or insisting that they be the broker.”

Wong alleges that Sekula and Turrin set the $2.1 million price, higher than the appraised value, because they didn’t expect to receive offers and wanted to use that as leverage to convince another investor in their LLC to sell the investor’s shares to them, based on a conversation Wong had with Sekula. Wong said they had no intention of selling the property at that price.

Sekula and Turrin’s complaint, though, says they believe they can get more than that asking price, because they received such an offer before the building was publicly listed.

Wong’s complaint said that he feared “serious reputational damage” from the alleged conduct over the listing price, arguing the LLC could face a lawsuit from a brokerage for breaching a listing agreement. It also says that he was not aware Sekula and Turrin had other investors in their stake of the property when he partnered with them.

During the marketing process, Sekula and Turrin received an offer to buy the property for $2.1 million from Teo Scorte, a property manager for one of Wong’s properties, according to Sekula and Turrin’s complaint. They rejected the offer and suggested in the complaint that Scorte was acting as an intermediary for Wong, saying the offer was made “under the guise of being an independent purchaser.” Stanton said Wong informed Scorte of the property being for sale but denied he was acting as an affiliate of Wong.

In September, Wong made an offer through his attorney to buy his partners out of the property and become its sole owner. In an email between their attorneys included in the complaint, Stanton wrote that Wong requested “your client sell the property for $2.1M or sell its 50 percent membership interest to Mr. Wong at half this price ($1.05M).”

Another of Sekula and Turrin’s attorneys, Chad Poznansky, replied saying they would accept the offer “to sell NPV’s 50 percent interest in 1628 North Wells LLC to the Wong Trust in exchange for $1,050,000.”

But Stanton said that was a misunderstanding of Wong’s offer. The property was weighed down with a $1.58 million mortgage, so each member’s equity at a $2.1 million valuation would be $260,000. He said in a reply to Poznansky’s email that the offer was meant to reflect that, and the amount Wong would pay for their interest would be about $300,000, not $1.05 million, while Wong would assume sole responsibility for the mortgage debt.

“The allegation that Mr. Wong agreed to purchase his partner’s interest for $1.05M is false,” according to Stanton.

Sekula and Turrin said in their complaint that Wong breached the contract by backing out of the offer to pay $1.05 million for their 50 percent stake in the property, and they’re asking the judge to order him to buy them out at that price.

Alternatively, Wong’s complaint says Sekula and Turrin asked for $640,000 for their stake in the property, which was the amount both parties have invested in the property so far. That would equate to a $2.86 million valuation.

“It’s been seven years, and the property is losing money because the rents versus the costs don’t match,” Stanton said. “So we just want to move on.”