“Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, were the buyers who paid $11.2 million last year for Citadel founder Ken Griffin’s 66th-floor penthouse in Streeterville’s Park Tower building.
Lucas and Hobson plan to combine the penthouse with their existing full-floor condo on the 65th floor of the same building — which they purchased for $18.75 million in 2015 — to create a 16,000-square-foot duplex penthouse, according to a building permit application recently filed with Chicago building officials. The combined condo will cost $33.5 million to assemble, including construction costs and the purchase prices of the two units, making it the highest-priced finished condo in Chicago history.
The next-highest price anyone has ever paid for a condo in Chicago is the $20.56 million that Mexican billionaire German Larrea spent in 2022 for a four-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot duplex condominium on the 71st floor of the Residences at the St. Regis Tower.
According to a permit application that Lucas and Hobson filed with Chicago building officials on Feb. 22, the couple plan a full buildout of the 66th-floor unit, including the addition of two new interior staircases and some new electrical and mechanical work on the 65th floor. The couple hired architect Scott Fortman of the firm Gibbons, Fortman & Associates for the design work.
Angelo Garcia, who oversees real estate holdings for Lucas, referred an inquiry to a spokesman, Matt Yale, who did not immediately respond to an email seeking a comment. Real estate agent Katherine Malkin of Compass, who represented Lucas and Hobson in buying the 66th-floor unit, declined to comment on any aspect of the deal or even confirm her clients’ identities, as did real estate agent Susan Miner of Premier Relocation, who represented Griffin in selling the 66th-floor unit. Griffin relocated to Miami.
Lucas, who turns 80 on May 14, has a net worth of $5.5 billion, according to Forbes’ 2024 list. He and Hobson, who turns 55 in May, made their 2023 purchase of the 66th-floor Park Tower unit using an opaque Delaware limited liability company, and their identities as its buyers had not been reported until now. They used a differently named Delaware limited liability company to buy the 65th-floor unit in 2015.
The couple have shown a great affinity for the Park Tower over the years. Before marrying Lucas, Hobson, who also is the non-executive chair of Starbucks and the co-CEO of Ariel Investments, paid $1.7 million in 2007 for a 48th-floor unit in the building. The couple also paid $4.9 million in 2012 for a condo on the Park Tower’s 26th floor.
Not only will the couple’s new combined duplex in the Park Tower set a Chicago price record for a completed Chicago condo, it also consists of units that previously had set record-setting purchase prices themselves. When Griffin bought the 66th floor in 2012, he paid $15 million for it, which was at that time a city record. And Lucas and Hobson’s $18.75 million purchase of the 65th floor three years later also set a Chicago record.
The new combined duplex would have had a combined $328,477 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year.
Lucas and Hobson own plenty of other real estate around the globe. Among their properties are Lucas’ longtime, six-bedroom, 15,159-square-foot house in San Anselmo, Calif.; a nine-bedroom, 8,932-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles’ Bel-Air area that they bought from Ross Perot in 2017 for $33.9 million; two homes in Carpinteria, Calif., near Santa Barbara, that they purchased for $28 million and $19.5 million; a condo in New York City that Hobson bought in 2006 for $3.3 million; a restored convent in Passignano, Italy; a chateau in Chateauvert, France; and the 4,700-acre Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, Calif. that Lucas began assembling in 1978.
Meanwhile, Griffin continues to own the full-floor penthouse condo on the 67th floor of the Park Tower, which is the building’s top floor. It’s for sale for $15.75 million, which is tied for the second highest-priced asking price for any home in the city right now.
Across the Chicago area, the most expensive residence in history is billionaire Justin Ishbia’s mansion under construction on Lake Michigan in Winnetka, which as Elite Street first reported last year has a $77.7 million cost, including land and construction costs as detailed in its building permit.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
