Downtown Evanston Office Building Sells For Over $10 Million

EVANSTON, IL — The new owner of a downtown Evanston office building plans an "extensive renovation and modernization" of the building after purchasing it for $10.6 million earlier this month, according to the brokerage on the deal.

The five-story, 85,000-square-foot brick building at 820 Davis St. was built in 1975. It is located a block to the east of the Davis Street CTA and Metra stations and one block west of Fountain Square.

It was purchased by Free Market Ventures, an investment firm founded in 2013 by former Winnetka Trustee John "Jack" Buck III, son and namesake of a "living patriarch of Chicago commercial real estate" and a developer of many downtown Chicago office towers.

Among Free Market Ventures' other investments are marijuana growing warehouses in Joliet, Lincoln and Kankakee, which became the subject of the first lawsuit challenging the secretive awarding of state licenses to grow medical marijuana.

The seller was Charles Happ, owner of Winnetka-based Happ Management, who purchased the property for $6.25 million in 2002, according to property records.

Between 2002 and 2006, Happ spent less than $10 million to buy three Evanston buildings — the Davis Street building, the 1937 Leffingwell Building at 821-25 Chicago Ave. and the site of the rental car company at 2636-38 Green Bay Road, according to Crain's Chicago Business.

Happ's 820 Davis LLC, Green Bay Enterprise LLC, and Leffingwell Building LLC were named in a $8.5 million foreclosure lawsuit filed in June 2011 and dismissed that December. He has not responded to a request for comment about the sale of the Davis Street building.

According to the Cook County Assessor's Office, the building's value for taxing purposes was less than $6.4 million last year. It was reassessed at more than $16 million this year ahead of a potential appeal, which Happ has filed in eight of the previous nine years and which have kept the assessed value essentially flat for more than a decade.

Stephan Lieberman, a vice president at Marcus & Millichap, the Calabasas, California-based commercial real estate investment services firm that brokered the sale, said the new ownership "should prove to be successful" given the presently positive outlook for future demand for downtown Evanston office space.

“The office market in Evanston is extremely stable, particularly in the central business district, where 820 Davis St. is located,” Lieberman said, announcing the deal. “New ownership has the opportunity to renovate and reposition the property in the near term for additional value creation.”

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