Lendlease, Magellan Fetch $4.5M for Lakeshore East Penthouse

A penthouse in Chicago’s newest condo tower Cirrus, in the Lakeshore East neighborhood near the waterfront sold for $4.5 million, setting the highest price for a property in the 47-story building so far.

The two-story unit on the 46th and 47th floors is one of 15 penthouses in the building, which was built by Lendlease and Magellan Development and hosted its first move-ins last year.

The 3,664-square-foot condo has three bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms and Lake Michigan-facing terraces on each level. The deal closed earlier this month and the sellers did not disclose the identity of the buyers, and they are not yet named in Cook County public records.

At a little more than $1,200 per square foot, the condo unit certainly qualifies for consideration as a high-end sale in the Chicago market, but it’s less pricey than the nearby St. Regis, a taller tower where a penthouse has fetched more than $1,300 per square foot.

“There’s certainly been some pandemic challenges like every major city, but where this building is located in Lakeshore East is a very, very secluded oasis amongst downtown Chicago,” Lendlease’s Jon Cordell said of Cirrus.

The building, whose address is 211 North Harbor Drive, has 350 condos and is adjacent to Cascade, a 37-story, 503-unit high-end rental tower also developed by Magellan and Lendlease and that shares amenities with Cirrus. The condo building has units ranging from one to four-bedroom layouts in addition to the penthouses and townhomes. The property began pre-sales in April 2019 and opened to its first residents in early 2022, weathering the pandemic.

Cordell said that the pandemic didn’t change the desirability of the neighborhood or the developers’ timeline in major ways, but has boosted the value of living in an amenity-rich building for some potential buyers.

The building is offering a partnership with Cross Country Mortgage for a mortgage rate buy-down that could get mortgages down to 3.375 percent to appeal to potential buyers. Cordell said that a similar mortgage found on the market without such a program would be over 7 percent, an offering he contended sets the building apart for buyers who want to take advantage.

Rising interest rates have presented a challenge to the entire real estate market, but especially areas like downtown Chicago, where condo sales have generally lagged behind the rest of Chicagoland’s housing market. Cirrus appears to be one of the exceptions to that rule with 14 contracts over the last 60 days. In downtown, luxury new construction has generally fared better than the rest of the condo inventory.

Editor’s note: The number and style of unit floor plans available in Cirrus has been updated in this story.