Timothy P. Walbert, the former CEO of the now-acquired biotechnology company Horizon Therapeutics, and his wife, Keli, are the buyers who paid $13.5 million in June to buy a six-bedroom, 8,756-square-foot mansion on the southern shoreline of Geneva Lake in Lake Geneva, Wis.
The Walberts purchased the mansion from John Cobb, the recently retired chief investment officer at Chicago-based real estate investment trust Ventas Inc., and his wife, Sarah.
Walbert launched several major drugs, including the immunosuppressive drug Humira, while working in immunology at Abbott Laboratories. He then joined Horizon in 2008 as its CEO and relocated the company to the Chicago area that same year. Walbert took Horizon public in 2011, and sold the firm earlier this year to biotech giant Amgen for $28 billion. At the time of the sale, Horizon’s U.S. headquarters was in Deerfield.
Walbert and his wife have owned another home in Lake Geneva. In June, according to sources in Lake Geneva, they paid $13.5 million for the Cobbs’ house, which was built in 2018 and designed by Evanston architectural firm Morgante Wilson Architects.
The Walberts’ new mansion had not been publicly listed, but the Cobbs had privately offered it for sale starting in April for $14 million, according to records in the multiple listing service that only were made public after the home sold. The mansion has 7-1/2 bathrooms and a suspended hallway that spans the home’s double-height great room, connecting the bedroom wings on the top floor and passing through a steel chimney, according to a Luxe Interiors + Design article about the mansion in 2021. Other features include a traditional-style front with mullioned windows, a standing seam metal roof, steel balcony handrails, windows topped by steel I-beams, and a lannon stone exterior. Outside, the mansion sits on about a 1.43-acre parcel that has a swimming pool, a pier and two boat slips.
Records show that the Walberts used a Northbrook-based land trust to buy the mansion.
The Walberts’ purchase price is higher than any amount paid so far this year for any home in Chicago or its suburbs. But the Walberts’ purchase price falls short of some of the highest prices ever paid for lakefront estates in Lake Geneva. Billionaire J. Christopher Reyes paid a record $36 million in early 2022 for the late money manager Richard Driehaus’ 12-bedroom, 14,145-square-foot mansion in Lake Geneva, while gaming cabinet and console magnate James Conlon paid $17 million for the vintage Villa Hortensia mansion on 20.5 lakefront acres in Lake Geneva, which, as Elite Street reported, Conlon later wound up demolishing.
A spokesman for Tim Walbert declined to comment on the purchase. The real estate agent who represented both the buyers and the sellers, David Curry, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Walberts’ new mansion had a $68,755 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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