Summerlin developer sells stake in Chicago skyscraper
Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. has sold its ownership stake in a Chicago skyscraper, saying the deal values the building at more than $1 billion.
The company announced this week that it sold its equity interest in a 55-story, riverfront office tower for $210 million to Callahan Capital Partners and Oak Hill Advisors. The deal involved the sale of a limited liability company of which Hughes Corp. owned 90 percent.
All told, the sale generates “significant” proceeds that the developer will reinvest into new projects and use to repurchase shares as part of its stock buyback program, CEO David O’Reilly said in a news release Wednesday.
Texas-based Hughes Corp. did not say in the release what share of the 1.5-million-square-foot property is now held by the new owners. But based on the sales price, the “implied value” of the skyscraper, 110 N. Wacker Drive, exceeds $1 billion, it said.
The company previously disclosed in a securities filing that the project would cost an estimated $722.6 million, and it later disclosed in another securities filing that its “economic ownership” of the tower amounted to 23 percent.
Hughes Corp. partnered on the project with Chicago developer John O’Donnell’s Riverside Investment & Development. They held a ceremonial groundbreaking in June 2018 and opened the building in October 2020.
The tower is more than 82 percent leased, according to Hughes Corp.
In Las Vegas, Hughes Corp. sells land to homebuilders in the Summerlin master-planned community, which spans 22,500 acres along the valley’s western rim, boasts more than 100,000 residents and commands some of the highest home and land prices in Southern Nevada.
The company, led locally by Las Vegas regional president Kevin Orrock, has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing a web of retail space, offices, apartments and a minor league baseball stadium in Summerlin’s commercial core off Sahara Avenue and the 215 Beltway.
The stadium, Las Vegas Ballpark, is home of the Howard Hughes Corp.-owned Las Vegas Aviators.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
