Billionaire Neil Bluhm Takes Steep Loss on Magnificent Mile

Marcel Arsenault landed a financially troubled Chicago office deal with a bumpy entrance into the market and a rough loss for its billionaire seller and lender.

Louisville, Colorado-based Real Capital Solutions, led by Arsenault and known for buying distressed commercial property, acquired the 35-story Magnificent Mile tower at 401 North Michigan Avenue for $132.5 million, the company said Wednesday.

That price tag represents a financial bath for the seller, real estate and casino tycoon Neil Bluhm’s firm Walton Street Capital. His Chicago-based firm paid roughly $360 million for the 748,000-square-foot tower in 2017, though that deal also included a retail space leased to Apple that was sold for $79 million in 2019.

Subtracting the retail sale price, the sale to real Capital marks a value drop of nearly 53 percent, wiping out about $148 million in equity.

It also appears to be a short sale. The deal closed well below the $160 million mortgage that ING Capital issued on the property in 2019, leaving the lender to swallow a roughly $27.5 million loss — a scenario that has become increasingly common as borrowers hand back keys to their lenders or negotiate exits from underwater offices.

But ING may have the chance to make up some of that with more interest payments: Real Capital also obtained some seller financing from ING and co-lenders to fund part of the deal, though the firm’s acquisitions chief Adam Abeln declined to discuss further details of the debt stack with The Real Deal.

“Now, we have the capabilities to close for cash and all these deals, but if we can get financing, it really helps the returns,” Abeln said.

Real Capital has been circling Chicago’s distressed office market armed with a reported $3.5 billion war chest for bargain-hunting. It previously zeroed in on the 40-story tower at 190 South LaSalle Street before backing out and pivoting to the Mag Mile deal.

“At the end of the day, it just didn’t fit our strategy,” Abeln said of 190 South LaSalle, while also mentioning the difficulty of getting financing for Chicago office deals. Real Capital is also preparing to buy a suburban Chicago office building, though Abeln declined to specify which one at this point. The firm is open to more acquisitions in Chicagoland, though, he said.

The deal at 401 North Michigan becomes the latest data point in a grim sequence for Michigan Avenue offices, where valuations are in freefall and institutional owners are throwing in the towel.

Down the street, a Blackstone debt vehicle seized the 517,000-square-foot building at 444 North Michigan in April, after Golub & Co. and partner CIM Group defaulted on a $95 million loan.

The pain radiates north, too: in December, a joint venture between Golub and Abu Dhabi-based BlueFive Capital saw their loan on 625 North Michigan Avenue sent to special servicing. They joined a similar fate as the former lender for the neighboring 500 North Michigan Avenue, which sold last year for just $5.1 million. That followed a previous owner’s $80 million loan default, giving the 500 North Michigan’s new landlord, Commonwealth Development Partners, a chance to turn it into housing.

With 401 North Michigan now trading at a fraction of its replacement cost, it sets a brutal comparable for those nearby landlords still clinging to 2019 valuations.

The deal caps a tumultuous period for the property. Walton Street had been hunting for an exit for months. Late last year, the Saudi Arabia-backed Olayan Group was in advanced talks to acquire the tower, but that deal fell apart, forcing Bluhm’s firm to re-list the asset in a market that still hadn’t fully recovered from the pandemic.

For Bluhm, the sale is another painful mark on his Chicago ledger. His other marquee asset, the 900 North Michigan Avenue skyscraper, recently required a $56 million equity injection from his other firm, JMB Realty, to secure a refinancing deal as valuations plummeted.

Despite the financial carnage, 401 North Michigan remains a trophy asset on paper. It is 87 percent leased to tenants including the American Dental Association and BDT & MSD Partners, well above the downtown Chicago average of more than 25 percent vacancy. Real Capital touted the $17 million in recent renovations and the “flight to quality” trends it hopes to capitalize on.

JLL’s Bruce Miller, Jaime Fink, and John Mason represented Walton Street in the transaction.

Walton Street’s co-founder Jeffrey Quicksilver and his wife Ashley also made real estate headlines late last year when they sold their lakefront Winnetka estate for $34.5 million, the largest resale of a single-family home in Illinois history. The couple downsized into a lakefront Kenilworth mansion they bought for $14.5 million, a record for that North Shore suburb.