Billionaire Ken Griffin has found a buyer for the five-bedroom, 7,400-square-foot Near North Side condo he’s long called home, just weeks after he put it on the market for $11.5 million.
Griffin made headlines recently when he announced that move 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. Shortly after, Griffin list many of his luxury properties in Chicago for sale. That meant listing the following four condos at once: an 8,000-square-foot full-floor condo on the 66th floor of Park Tower for $13.25 million, a 9,250-square-foot full-floor condo on the 67th floor and above of Park Tower for $15.75 million, an unfinished 7,085-square-foot condo on the 35th floor of the building at 9 W. Walton St. for $14 million and a 7,400-square-foot condo unit on the 37th floor of the Waldorf Astoria for $11.5 million.
In total, Griffin brought the Near North Side condominiums to the market with combined sales prices of $54.5 million at the same time. And that didn’t even cover all of Griffin’s high-priced residential properties in Chicago, as he refrained from listing the remaining top three floors, from floors 36 to 38, of the building at 9 W. Walton. Those floors are also unfinished, and it’s unclear what Griffin’s plans, if any, are to sell those units. He paid $58.75 million in 2017 in four separate transactions for the top four floors at 9 W. Walton, but never built or moved into those units, which remain green space.
On September 26, Griffin signed a contract to sell the condominium in the Waldorf Astoria building, which is located at 11 E. Walton St. Public records indicate that the Waldorf Astoria unit has been Griffin’s actual residence in Chicago for many years. , and that before that, he resided in Park Tower. The Waldorf Astoria unit has six bathrooms, two fireplaces, two offices, a bonus room, a private entrance gallery with floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, a living room with custom built-ins and Sapele mahogany floors, and an eat-in kitchen with built-in pantry and bar, stone countertops, two full-size wine cabinets, and stainless steel appliances by Sub-Zero, Wolf, and Miele. The main bedroom of the condominium has a terrace, two exhibitions and three walk-in closets.
Griffin paid $13.3 million in 2014 for the 37th-floor unit at the Waldorf Astoria. And the 37th-floor unit isn’t the only condo Griffin has owned at 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 in late 2015 to billionaire Jude Reyes, co-chairman of beer and food distributor Reyes Holdings, for the same $16 million he had paid for it.
Griffin’s 37th-floor condo had a property tax bill of $130,209 in fiscal year 2020. It’s not yet known when that unit will close for sale, or at what price, or who the buyers will be.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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