Bixby and Franklin Buy Distressed Loan in Downtown Chicago

Bixby Bridge Capital and Franklin Partners are smelling blood in the water as Chicago’s battered office sector presents the local firms another chance to acquire a troubled building on the cheap.

A joint venture of Northbrook-based Bixby and Oak Brook-based Franklin snagged the troubled loan on the 23-story office building at 200 West Monroe Street in the Loop for a fraction of its face value, notching their third distressed Chicago office deal in the past two years. They paid about $16 million for the loan note, far below the $75 million face value of the loan taken out in 2014 by the current property owner, Hallandale Beach, Florida-based Accesso Partners, according to an earlier Crain’s report.

Bixby’s longest-serving principal is David Williams, according to its website, while Franklin is led by firm partners Donald Shoemaker, Ray Warner and Gary Tamminga.

The Monroe Street building has become a poster child for the broader financial strain on the city’s commercial real estate market. The 536,000-square-foot tower was sold to Accesso in 2014 for $100 million, before more recently grappling with reduced rent rolls, tenant consolidations and a looming mortgage default that led to a foreclosure lawsuit being filed last year by Deutsche Bank on behalf of bondholders in the building’s loan.

Accesso has fallen into loan trouble on several other office properties it bought throughout the Chicago area in the years leading up to the pandemic, including in Naperville and at 20 North Clark Street, another Chicago Loop tower the landlord handed back to its lender last year.

For Bixby and Franklin, however, the Loop’s pain is the perfect entry point for a low-basis takeover. Their 200 West Monroe acquisition reinforces a familiar playbook for the repeat partners: scoop up underwater debt or distressed properties on the cheap and position themselves to lease at a lower cost basis than their competitors.

Newmark brokers John Daniels, Derek Fohl, Peter Harwood and Jim Postweiler marketed the Monroe Street loan note for sale on behalf of the lender.

The purchase closely mirrors the buyers’ recent high-profile play in River North. Bixby and Franklin previously teamed up to take control of the office floors at 20 West Kinzie Street, acquiring the 250,000-square-foot space for roughly $20 million — a large discount compared to the roughly $60 in unpaid debt on the property at the time of the transaction. That building’s value plummeted during the ownership of Wilmette-based investor Micahel Alter’s firm Alter Group following the departure of its anchor tenant, WeWork.

While Franklin has been laser-focused on repositioning office assets, Bixby has been busy throwing its weight around across multiple asset classes in the Windy City, unafraid to flex as a hard-nosed lender when developers falter.

In late 2025, Fulton Street Companies’ Ross Babel signed deeds handing over several Fulton Market retail properties to Bixby, after Bixby filed and then quickly dismissed a $45 million foreclosure lawsuit alleging that a Fulton Street affiliate had defaulted on debt. The portfolio of buildings tied to the debt, which the deeds proffered by Fulton Street resolved, included 1101 West Fulton, 120 North May, 220 North Aberdeen and a parking lot at 351 North May streets.

— Sam Lounsberry