Helmut Jahn-Designed Evanston Office Building Up For Sale

EVANSTON, IL — The downtown Evanston office building designed by the late world-renowned architect Helmut Jahn is set to change hands for the third time since the Great Recession.

The eight-story building was built in 1984, replacing a Weiboldt's department store at the northeast corner of Church Street and Oak Avenue. Originally dubbed Shand Morahan Plaza, 1007 Church St. is now known as Evanston MetroCenter.

After being converted from a single-tenant property, the glass-covered, 163,351-square-foot, mid-rise office building on a 1.03-acre parcel was purchased in 2007 for $27 million by a California firm then-known as Triple Net Properties. The owners wound up defaulting on it after former tenant Thomson Reuters vacated about a third of the building in 2011.

Then, after a 2012 foreclosure suit, a venture of Michigan-based Farbman Group and Pennsylvania-based Lubert-Adler Partners snapped up the half-empty building for $9.6 million at a court-ordered sale in 2014. That ownership group sold it in for $30 million to the Virginia-based firm FD Stonewater in 2016, according to past reports.

While representatives of the listing broker Jones Lang LaSalle would not disclose the asking price Thursday, the property is expected to go for more than $40 million, sources told Crain's Chicago Business, which first reported the building was up for sale.

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Current major tenants include Accuity, Ansys, Northwestern University and NorthShore Medical Group. More than 20 percent of the building has been leased out since the start of 2020, according to its listing, with current occupancy now above 91 percent.

"The combination of commercial zoning requirements and lack of feasible development sites in downtown Evanston result in limited Class-A office product," according to the listing, "further positioning the rare Property as one of the few premier assets in this vibrant downtown."

Jahn's Evanston office building was completed the year before the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop, which the state has now listed for sale and possible demolition.

The world-famous postmodern architect also designed a terminal at O'Hare International Airport, several buildings at the University of Chicago and the Shure headquarters in Niles.

Jahn died last month at the age of 81 in west suburban Campton Hills, where police said he was struck by two cars after riding his bicycle through a stop sign.