Billionaire Ken Griffin has found a buyer for his top-floor condominium on the 38th floor of the building at 9 W. Walton Street, a unit he has had on the market since July for $11 million.
On Monday, his real estate agents updated his listing for the unit to reflect that a contract has been signed with an undisclosed buyer for a still-undisclosed amount. The unit has 16-foot windows, two terraces and private in-unit elevator access to a private rooftop pool and a private 39th-floor interior space.
In a package deal, Griffin famously paid $58.75 million in late 2017 in four separate transactions to buy the top four floors of the building at 9 W. Walton, which was then newly completed. Griffin never finished the units and as a result never occupied them, preferring instead to keep as his Chicago residence a 37th-floor condo in the Waldorf Astoria building nearby. In 2022, Griffin announced he was moving his residence and his hedge fund firm, Citadel, to Miami.
Since 2022, Griffin has been shedding his ties to Chicago, including trying to sell his downtown condos, which include the units at 9 W. Walton, the Park Tower and the Waldorf Astoria. However, he hadn’t yet found buyers for any of the units he has owned at 9 W. Walton.
Although Griffin’s other full-floor units on the 35th through 37th floors of 9 W. Walton currently are not publicly listed, the real estate agents for his 38th-floor unit made clear in listing remarks over the summer that those floors also were available. And Griffin had sought $14 million for the 35th-floor unit from 2022 until 2023 and had asked $12 million for the 36th-floor condo from 2023 until taking it off the public market in March.
Listing agent Nancy Tassone of Jameson Sotheby’s International Real Estate, who is co-listing the unit with Emily Sachs Wong of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, declined to comment on the recent development with the 38th-floor unit. Wong told Elite Street Tuesday that the listing of the 38th-floor penthouse offered a buyer the “most exceptional opportunity to customize a home with a private roof deck and pool in the ultra-desirable 9 Walton building.”
Wong added that “we do have the potential for a couple of additional units which someone can still buy.”
Beyond his holdings in the building at 9 W. Walton, Griffin has the 9,250-square-foot, 67th-floor full-floor penthouse in the Park Tower for sale for $15.75 million. He sold the 8,000-square-foot, 66th-floor full-floor penthouse in the Park Tower last year for $11.2 million to retired filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, who also owns the full-floor unit on the 65th floor. Griffin also sold his 7,400-square-foot full-floor unit on the 37th floor of the Waldorf Astoria for $10.225 million in October 2022 to a still-unidentified buyer who bought it through an opaque ownership vehicle.
Griffin’s 38th-floor unit had a $485,414 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
