Billionaire Ken Griffin has found a buyer for the five-bedroom, 7,400-square-foot Near North Side condominium that he long has called his home, just weeks after he placed it on the market for $11.5 million.
Griffin made headlines recently when he announced he would relocate his hedge fund firm, Citadel, as well as his own family to Miami, attributing the reason for the move at least in part to crime in Chicago. Soon afterward, Griffin listed many of his high-end Chicago properties for sale. That meant listing the following four condos at once: An 8,000-square-foot full-floor condominium on the 66th floor of the Park Tower for $13.25 million, a 9,250-square-foot full-floor condominium on the Park Tower’s 67th and top floor for $15.75 million, a 7,085-square-foot unfinished condominium on the 35th floor of the building at 9 W. Walton Street for $14 million and the 7,400-square-foot condo unit on the 37th floor of the Waldorf Astoria for $11.5 million.
In total, Griffin dropped Near North Side condos with combined asking prices of $54.5 million onto the market at the same time. And that didn’t even cover all of Griffin’s high-priced residential properties in Chicago, as he held back on listing the remaining top three floors — the 36th through 38th floor — of the building at 9 W. Walton. Those floors also are unfinished, and it’s unclear what Griffin’s plans are, if any, for selling those units. He paid $58.75 million in 2017 in four separate transactions for the top four floors at 9 W. Walton, but he never built out or moved into those units, which remain raw space.
On Sept. 26, Griffin went under contract to sell the condo in the Waldorf Astoria building, which is at 11 E. Walton Street. Public records state that the Waldorf Astoria unit has been Griffin’s actual Chicago residence for many years, and that prior to that, he resided in the Park Tower. The Waldorf Astoria unit has six bathrooms, two fireplaces, two offices, a bonus room a private gallery entryway with floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, a living room with bespoke custom built-ins and Sapele mahogany floors, and an eat-in kitchen with a built-in pantry and bar, stone countertops, two large wine refrigerators and stainless steel appliances by Sub-Zero, Wolf and Miele. The condo’s primary bedroom has a terrace, two exposures and three walk-in closets.
Griffin paid $13.3 million in 2014 for the 37th-floor unit in the Waldorf Astoria. And the 37th-floor unit isn’t the only condo that Griffin has owned in the Waldorf Astoria. He paid $16 million in 2014 for the full-floor unit on the building’s 46th floor. He sold that 46th-floor unit at the end of 2015 to billionaire Jude Reyes, the co-chairman of beer and food distributor Reyes Holdings, for the same $16 million amount that he had paid for it.
Griffin’s 37th-floor condo had a $130,209 property tax bill in the 2020 tax year. It’s not yet known when he will close on the sale of that unit, nor for what price or who the buyers are.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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