One Illinois Center, the 33-story office tower at 111 E. Wacker Drive designed by famed architect Mies van der Rohe, is headed to a foreclosure auction. The building has become the latest downtown Chicago office property to land on the sales block as landlords across the Loop struggle under the weight of a historically weak office market.
The foreclosure was reported by Crain's Chicago Business, which identified the 969,000-square-foot tower at 111 E. Wacker Drive as the subject of the pending sale.
Designed by Mies van der Rohe, One Illinois Center was built in 1970 as part of the broader Illinois Center complex, according to a 1999 report from the Chicago Tribune. The tower has changed hands before: Koll Bren Realty Advisors bought the building for $52 million in 1996 and put roughly $22 million into renovations, the Tribune reported. A joint venture of Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle Realty and Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. then purchased the tower for an estimated $108 million in 1999.
A Listing Still on the Market
Commercial listings show at least some space inside the tower actively being marketed. A 14,058-square-foot office suite at One Illinois Center is listed for sublease, according to a Cushman & Wakefield listing. It is not established whether that listing remains active or who currently occupies or seeks to sublet the space.
The building's troubles arrive against a grim backdrop for downtown Chicago office towers generally. Total office vacancy downtown hit 25.6% in the second quarter of 2026, according to a market report from JLL. Net absorption for the quarter was negative 9,513 square feet, with trophy and Class A buildings absorbing 117,613 square feet even as Class B and C properties logged 127,126 square feet of negative absorption — a split that underscores how older, lower-tier office stock is bearing the brunt of the downturn.
Financing Strain Across the Sector
Leasing activity has not been entirely absent from downtown. The JLL report found leasing volume reached 903,240 square feet in the second quarter, with the West Loop accounting for 44% of that activity, while sublease availability fell to 4.2 million square feet, its lowest level since the second quarter of 2020. No new office space was under development downtown as of that quarter, and nearly 7 million square feet was slated for removal through conversions to other uses.
Behind those leasing numbers sits a deepening debt crisis. The CMBS office delinquency rate reached 12.34% in January 2026, surpassing the previous peak of 11.76% set in October 2025, per data from Trepp. That rate has climbed steadily from roughly 1.60% in mid-2022, and Trepp estimates the sector may approach a peak in the 12% to 13% range sometime in 2026. The firm attributes the majority of new delinquencies in this cycle to maturity defaults — loans coming due that owners cannot refinance or repay.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Loop Foreclosures
One Illinois Center is not an isolated case. Bondholders who took control of the 691,410-square-foot office building at 2 North LaSalle Street through foreclosure two years earlier recently brought that property to the sales block, according to CRE News. Earlier this month, real estate investor Mike Kohan lost control of three Chicago Loop office towers as a court-appointed receiver took over one building while a British creditor seized others, as reported by The Real Deal.
Distress has spread beyond the Loop's core, too. A distressed office building in Naperville was recently reported heading to auction with a $950,000 starting bid, and the lender tied to the office portion of the 27-story tower at 625 N. Michigan Ave. was reported earlier this year to be preparing a foreclosure of its own.
Any eventual sheriff's sale of One Illinois Center would likely follow the standard process used in Cook County foreclosure auctions. Per information from the Cook County Sheriff's Office, such sales are held Monday through Friday, excluding holidays, at 1 p.m. on the lower level of the Daley Center outside Room 06, with winning bidders required to pay 10% of the final bid at the time of sale.
