See more pictures below.
 

Michael Jordan, that most iconic of Chicago sports figures, put his gated Highland Park estate on the market this morning, asking $29 million. It is by far the highest-priced home listed in the Chicago area. A Barrington Hills estate is up for $14.9 million.

Jordan’s white, contemporary-style mansion, in a subdivision known as Architecture Point, has 56,000 square feet of space on three levels, according to a press release. It is represented by Baird & Warner’s Katherine Chez Malkin, who this morning told me she could not yet comment on the property without approval from Jordan’s representatives.

Jordan bought the seven-acre lot for $2 million in 1991, the year he won his first of six NBA championships with the Bulls. He built what is now a nine-bedroom, 15-bath home, which was completed in 1995. In the main house are five fireplaces, numerous skylights and large windows, and a sleek kitchen; the press release says the house was renovated extensively in 2009. Also on the property are a full-size indoor basketball gym (built in 2001), a three-bedroom guesthouse, an outdoor tennis court, and three separate multicar garages. To block views of the property from the adjacent Heller Nature Center, Jordan planted a row of 40-foot evergreen trees.

Jordan bought the site two years after he married Juanita Vanoy; they divorced in 2006. Juanita Jordan bought a home in River North in 2007. It was widely rumored that neither she nor her ex-husband spent much time at the Highland Park estate in recent years. The youngest of their three children, Jasmine, a graduate of Whitney Young High School, is a freshman at Syracuse University.

Michael Jordan bought a $12.4 million estate in Jupiter Island, Florida, in November 2010. In 2009, he also took out a mortgage on a 5,500-square-foot home in Miami with his girlfriend, Yvette Prieto. In December, Jordan and Prieto announced their engagement.

Given Jordan’s penchant for perfectionism, it’s interesting to see that the press materials about the Highland Park mansion specifically point out that the home was “designed to Jordan’s exacting specifications.” It’s also worth noting that Leap Day is an apt occasion to put up for sale the home of a preternatural athlete whose gravity-defying skills on the basketball court made fans believe he could fly.

Photography: © JS Eckert Photography/Courtesy of Baird & Warner