Lake Forest mansion recently sold by Bill Wrigley
 

Lake Forest
List Price: $6.9 million
Sale Price: $5.6 million

Gold Coast
Sale Price: $6.7 million (for 2 condos)
The Properties: On Thursday, Bill Wrigley closed on the sale of his 16-room lakefront mansion in Lake Forest and on two of the three pieces of his unfinished penthouse space at 65 East Goethe.

Wrigley’s 11,000-square-foot Lake Forest home went up for sale informally in May 2009 priced at $16 million. When the house officially hit the market, the price had dropped to $14.5 million. The final sale price is 35 percent of Wrigley’s informal asking price and 38.6 percent of the official asking price.

Ned Skae, the agent on the Lake Forest property, says the $16 million asking price “was in line with some other asking prices at that time.” The sale price, he adds, is also in keeping with the current market: “He paid $9.9 million for it [in January 2003], and the [$5.6 million sale price] took it down about 45 percent, which is basically what [the real-estate market in] Lake Forest has done.”

65 East Goethe

At 65 East Goethe, Wrigley—the former chairman of his family’s gum company that’s now owned by Mars—had the full top floor. He bought it unfinished in late 2002 along with six garage spaces. Information from the Cook County Assessor and the Cook County Recorder of Deeds is incomplete about how much he paid, but Chicago previously reported that Wrigley spent $10.1 million. Baird & Warner, where Wrigley later listed the condo, put the original purchase price at $9.775 million.

Still unfinished, the full floor went on the market in 2009 with an asking price of $14 million. Wrigley later divided the 13,200-square-foot space into three separate pieces and listed two of them for sale, at $5 million and $6 million. When Wrigley cut those prices in August, his agent, Jim Kinney, told me that the third unit was being held back and might potentially be sold along with one of the other two.

That’s what ultimately happened, Kinney says. On Thursday, Wrigley sold the north piece, whose last asking price was $4.5 million, and the east piece, which was not listed, together for $6.7 million. Kinney said that, since the price cuts, there had been multiple offers on different configurations within the three spaces. On November 5, the north and east units went under contract after Wrigley accepted the all-cash offer on those two pieces, Kinney said.

Skae did not identify the Lake Forest buyer, and Kinney would not identify the new owner of the East Goethe property. He did say that it is not the same buyer as in Lake Forest. Neither buyer is yet identified in public records.

Price Points: The remaining piece of Wrigley’s holdings at 65 East Goethe is listed at $4 million. It will need to sell for at least $3.075 million for Wrigley to break even there, not counting the property taxes, homeowners assessments, and other carrying costs he would have been paying for the nearly nine years since he bought the space.

Listing Agent, Lake Forest: Ned Skae of Coldwell Banker; 847-234-8000, ext. 7688 or ned.skae@cbexchange.com

Listing Agent, Gold Coast: Jim Kinney 312-981-2081 and jim.kinney@bairdwarner.com