List Price: $1.595 million
Sale Price: $1.46 million
The Property: Ed Zander, the former chairman and CEO of Motorola, and his wife, Mona, have sold their 67th-floor condo at Water Tower Place.
The sale price was 23.6 percent below the $1.912 million that, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, the Zanders paid for the 2,975-square-foot home in March 2004. Their purchase came a few months after Ed Zander was brought in to replace Christopher Galvin at the top of the Schaumburg-based Motorola. (Galvin was the grandson of Paul Galvin, who cofounded the company with his brother, Joseph, in 1928.)
According to the listing agent, Robyn Brooks, the condo “has spectacular views of Lake Shore Drive and the north shoreline. You see all the harbors and the parks, and [as the sun sets] you see the shadows of the buildings on Lake Shore Drive on the lake. Then at night, when it’s dark, you get all the lights of the city, but the lake is black. It’s a great view.”
The condo has a large kitchen that was renovated, with cherry cabinets and high-end appliances, by owners prior to the Zanders. There is also a wet bar, a master bath that Brooks describes as “fabulous,” and, she says, “more closets than you would ever believe in a city apartment.”
Zander left Motorola at the end of 2007 with a year left on his contract, having failed, analysts said, to pull the company out of the slump that followed the success of its Razr cell phones. I could not reach the Zanders, who reportedly have homes in Carmel and Palm Desert, California. The buyers of their Chicago condo have not yet been identified in public records. The sale closed December 20.
On a related note: In August 2007, I wrote about the sale of an Oak Park house that in the 1930s belonged to Joseph Galvin.
Price Points: The Zanders first listed the condo, with a different agent and a $2.299 million price tag, in May 2008. Still unsold in February 2010, it was rented to a tenant for about $7,000 a month, Brooks says. That tenant stayed for two years, and the property went back on the market in March 2012, now for $1.75 million. That was cut a couple of times to the final asking price of $1.595 million. When the Zanders bought the place in 2004, they paid 41.6 percent above the 2000 sale price. Those were the days!
Listing Agent: Robyn Brooks of Prudential Rubloff; 312-264-1249 or rlbrooks@rubloff.com