CHICAGO-A $44-million mezzanine loan has closed for 353 N. Clark, the $400-million-plus office tower that will be jointly anchored by Jenner & Block LLP and Mesirow Financial. Transwestern Realty Finance Partners LLC closed on the mezzanine loan for the property, which recently broke ground and is preleased at about 65%.
The loan was made on behalf of Transwestern Mezzanine Realty Partners II LLC, an investment fund with $300 million in capital commitments. Senior loan financing covered 80% of the total construction cost, and the mezzanine loan will cover another 10%, says Mark Witt, senior vice president of Transwestern. The final 10% will be equity by the tenant developer, a partnership led by Mesirow Financial Real Estate Inc.
Witt said that though there's a lot of capital in the market, it was a challenge to get a loan of this size because of the limited amount of banks available. "When you look at the market, this is the last of the class A office properties going up for a while," Witt tells GlobeSt.com. "Hopefully the market will catch its breath. We feel pretty good that this property will lease up."
Locally based law firm Jenner & Block LLP has a 383,000-sf, 15-year new lease at the building. Mesirow has signed for 345,000 sf on floors four through 16 in the new 1.1-million-sf tower, which will be delivered in 2009. Both firms had leases expiring in 2010; one wanted space in the low-rise of a building, the other in the high-rise portion. Jenner & Block will be relocating from the IBM Building, located at 330 N. Wabash Ave., where the company has tenanted since the 1970s.
Dirk Lohan of Lohan Anderson LLC and A. Epstein & Sons International Inc. designed the building, which had been addressed at 351 N. Clark, but was changed recently. The structure will be built between Clark and Dearborn streets on the south side of Kinzie Street and will contain 25,000 sf of retail space fronting Clark, Kinzie and Dearborn streets, underground parking and amenities for the building's tenants including a health club and dining facilities. Stephen Smith and Gary Kostecki of Jones Lang LaSalle are leasing the remaining 365,000 sf of mid-rise space in the tower.
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