John O’Donnell

O’Donnell’s most recent ground-up project with Riverside, BMO Tower at 320 South Canal, delivered into one of the most difficult office markets in modern Chicago history.

Despite that timing, the building landed anchor tenant BMO Harris and later signed major leases with firms including Molson Coors and Antares Capital, defying the “office is dead” narrative.

O’Donnell started Riverside in 2010 after nearly three decades at The John Buck Company, where he rose to president and chaired its investment committee.

Since striking out on his own, O’Donnell has built a reputation for executing architecturally ambitious office projects that have drawn institutional capital from across the globe.

His calling card was 150 North Riverside, the 54-story tower constructed on a sliver of land above active Amtrak tracks in the West Loop. The building became one of Chicago’s most celebrated engineering feats of the past decade and helped push riverfront office demand west of the Loop’s traditional core. O’Donnell followed that with Bank of America Tower at 110 North Wacker, another riverfront statement that blended design credibility with blue-chip tenancy.

The firm has also been active in repositioning and adaptive reuse, including work exploring office-to-residential conversions supported by public subsidies as downtown demand shifts. While ground-up office development has largely frozen, O’Donnell has so far avoided the high-profile distress facing more leveraged peers.

— Emma Whalen