Yet another tall Chicago tower has sold for a sky high price. Yesterday afternoon, the Atlanta-based Piedmont Office Realty Trust closed on the Loop's Aon Center for $712 million, the Tribune and Crain's both report. Two weeks ago when the news of a potential sale of the city's third tallest tower broke, experts estimated that the Aon Center would fetch somewhere in the range of $650 million. The actual sale price blows previous estimates out of the water, perhaps bolstered by the recent news of Kraft Heinz's recent commitment to leasing 170,000 square feet of space in the modernist tower for their new headquarters.
The Aon Center is not the only notable big sale this year. In March, New York's Blackstone Group dropped a mind-blowing $1.3 billion for the city's tallest tower. The private equity group has since discussed plans to update the tower's amenities and its popular Skydeck observatory. The sales materials for the Aon Center deal did include some information regarding a possible observatory for the building, indicating that such an attraction could generate up to $30 million annually. There's no word on whether or not the Aon Center's new owners plan to actually follow through and build one, but an observatory at the Aon Center would be much more convenient for tourists to get to by foot versus the ones at the Hancock Center and Willis Tower.
·Aon Center skyscraper sold for $712 million [Tribune]
·Aon Center selling for $712 million [Crain's]
·The Loop's Aon Center Could Be Getting Its Own Observatory [Curbed Chicago]
·Previous Aon Center coverage [Curbed Chicago]
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