Downtown Evanston Office Building Sells For Over $32 Million

EVANSTON, IL — An Evanston office building was purchased last month for nearly 80 percent more than it its sales price 19 months earlier, Crain's Chicago Business reported. A joint venture of Northbrook investor Randall Rissman and Robert A. Wislow, chairman of commercial real estate brokerage CBRE, paid $32.35 million for the building property at 500 Davis St. on Dec. 21, according to Cook County property records.

They bought the 10-story building at the corner of Davis Street and Hinman Avenue from Chicago-based Steelbridge Capital, who paid just $18 million for it in May 2016. Back in 2009, previous owner Mohammed Mirza, president of Samir Financial Services, defaulted on a $21 million loan and lost the property in foreclosure, before it was eventually sold in 2014 for less than $15 million, according to Crain's.

Following a $600,000 renovation to the building's outdoor plaza space, Steelbridge was able to boost rent from about $30 per square foot to around $45 per square foot, the firm told Crain's. The firm also said it boosted parking revenue by almost 50 percent, increasing its overall net operating income by 78 percent to $1.6 million from 2016 to 2017.

Vacant high-quality office space in Evanston is hard to find. According to a letter from a commercial real estate company last year presented by the developer of a planned office tower on the city's library parking lot, the vacancy rate of class A office space in the suburb fell from 7.2 percent in 2016 to 4.8 percent last year.

Also in 2018, Evanston's tallest building, Orrington Plaza at 1603 Orrington Ave., netted investors sold for close to $30 million more than its previous sale five years earlier. In April, New York-based Investcorp and Golob and Company of Chicago agreed to sell the building to a venture of GEM Realty for $91 million after purchasing it for $61.5 million in 2013, according to Real Estate Alert.

According to property records, Rissman purchased the 500 Davis St. property through an LLC called 500 Davis Owner, which received a $21 million loan from Wislow 500 Davis, LLC on Dec. 12.

Rissman's father founded the toymaker Tiger Electronics – best known for low-cost handheld LCD games and electronic pets called Furbys in 1978. The Vernon Hills-based firm was sold to Hasbro for $335 million in 1998. Rissman has operated the venture capital firm Leo Capital Holdings since 2000.

Wislow co-founded the firm U.S. Equities Realty in 1978, which eventually became Chicago's largest privately owned commercial real estate company and merged with CBRE in 2014. He is also a a former IBM marking executive and the co-founder of LaSalle Partners.

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