Bill Farley’s Gold Coast Apartment Lists for $16M

A newly listed 12,000-square-foot unit in a Gold Coast cooperative building has the second most expensive price tag in Chicago.

Bill Farley, financier and former CEO of Fruit of the Loom, and his wife, Shelley, are asking nearly $16 million for their 14th floor apartment at 209 East Lake Shore Drive, the Chicago Tribune reported. Jeff Lowe of Compass is the listing agent.

The only more expensive listing in Chicago’s city limits is a 25,000-square-foot Lincoln Park mansion that’s priced at $30 million. In the suburbs, there’s a lakefront property priced just shy of $23 million, but all other active listings in the metropolitan area cost less than the Farley apartment.

Farley, who now runs private equity firm Liam Ventures, bought a 6,000-square-foot unit in the building in 1986 and combined it with another 6,000-square-foot unit that he bought six years later. He hired Chicago architect Laurence Booth to merge the apartments into a cohesive space with a modern design.

“The ceilings are 11-feet high, there are these huge windows, and, of course, there are no obstructions, and these views are incredible, not just for Chicago but for any major city in America to have this location, which is East Lake Shore Drive,” Farley told the outlet.

The apartment has seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms, six fireplaces, a custom-paneled library, an office, family room and a temperature-controlled wine room. The building also features a gym, two guest apartments and four garage spaces.

Lowe called Farley’s apartment “one of the most remarkable homes I’ve ever been in.”

“There’s no wasted space,” he told the outlet. “My sellers have a large family. With seven bedrooms and a library, their home is like a big house in the sky.”

If he makes a sale of the property, it won’t be Farley’s first prime Gold Coast deal. He previously owned, though never personally occupied, a 9,000-square-foot rehabbed Gold Coast mansion at the corner of Burton Place and Astor Street, the newspaper reported. He bought it in 1987 and sold it the next year to former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Galvin and his wife, Elizabeth.

— Quinn Donoghue