Condos in Tribune Tower will start around $700K and could exceed $7 million

You’ll likely need Michael Ferro money to afford the luxury condos coming to the former home of the Chicago Tribune.

A one bedroom residence in the Tribune Tower at 435 N. Michigan Avenue starts at $700,000 while a four-bedroom condo reaches $7 million-plus, according to the Tower’s new website.

The site is very light on details about the updated interiors and amenities of the revamped neo-Gothic skyscraper that housed the Chicago Tribune and its parent company for almost a century. Register your interest, an email says the Tower’s sales gallery opens in August.

CIM/Golub

The home page proclaims: “Live Timelessly. An architectural masterpiece gracing the city skyline with a sense of permanence and beauty. Now meticulously transformed into elegantly stunning luxury residences. Find your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

But a full-page advertisement covered in a recent column by the Tribune’s Mary Schmich hints at what’s to come. The ad shows an illustration in which a woman in a fancy white dress stands in a massive room featuring arched windows, an elaborate chandelier, and lots of couches.

The irony of upscale residences in a former newsroom notorious for its unfussy interiors (and, yes, cockroaches) is not lost on Schmich:

“No, no. That can’t be right. While newspapers all over the country struggle, while reporters are laid off or working for paltry wages, people are going to buy multimillion-dollar homes in an old newspaper building?

Chicago developer Golub & Co. and LA-based partner CIM Group purchased the landmarked skyscraper and surrounding buildings for $240 million in 2016 and later announced a plan to convert the building constructed in 1925 into 163 condominiums. Interior demolition is currently underway. The designers of the tower’s conversion is SCB, or Solomon Cordwell Buenz.

The $1 billion development also calls for the construction of a 96-story supertall skyscraper just east of Tribune Tower, but the city has yet to approve that part of the plan. The Tribune Company left its namesake building in June of 2018, and moved three blocks to One Prudential Plaza.

Jay Koziarz/Curbed