A landmark 41-story office tower at 121 W. Wacker Drive has sold at a 75% discount, becoming the latest downtown Chicago building to change hands for a fraction of its former value. The tower hit the market after its owner and lender sought a path forward, part of a broader reckoning playing out across the Loop's office sector.
According to Crain's Chicago Business, the discounted sale closed as the building's ownership and lender worked through financial pressure that had already pushed the property onto the market. Chicago investor Ameritus had purchased the tower from Sterling Bay in 2018, a deal Crain's reported at the time under the headline “Sterling Bay sells Wacker Drive tower to Chicago investor Ameritus.” The Real Deal has separately reported, with lower confidence, that Ameritus paid $118.5 million for the building that year.
Per the Chicago Business Journal, the 441,030-square-foot tower sold for around $30 million, and investors behind the deal are described as betting on Google's arrival in the Loop. The building had previously undergone lobby, corridor and elevator-cab upgrades, according to a project description from Leopardo Construction, which cited a redesigned lobby and retail level along with updated elevator cabs.
A Discount Deal Amid a Choppy Downtown Market
The sale lands in a downtown office investment market that cooled sharply quarter over quarter even as it posted gains for the year. Investment sales totaled $81 million in the third quarter of 2026, down from more than $416 million in the second quarter, according to a market report from Bradford Allen. Year-to-date volume still exceeded $849 million through the third quarter, up 67% compared with 2025, the same report notes.
More than half of the quarter's downtown property sales were earmarked for redevelopment or conversion, work that could remove nearly half a million square feet from the central business district's office inventory, per the Bradford Allen report. Direct vacancy downtown rose to 25.0% from 24.4% during the same period, with net absorption landing around negative 269,000 square feet.
Google's Thompson Center Move Looms Over the Loop
The backdrop to the Wacker Drive sale is Google's planned Midwest headquarters at the James R. Thompson Center, which is expected to open late next year. Brokers and developers believe the move could kick off a wave of redevelopment in the Central Loop, according to the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune reported that the Central Loop's office vacancy rate was already at a historic high and kept climbing through 2025, and that developers had no plans to break ground on any new downtown office towers.
Other investors have already made moves nearby. Onni Group bought the roughly 1-million-square-foot tower at 161 N. Clark St. for $125 million in March and plans a complete rehab of the building, the Tribune reported. Elsewhere downtown, Spear Street Capital sold a 31-story riverfront office tower for $115 million to Hines and Prime Finance, according to a lower-confidence account from Law360 Real Estate Authority.
Taken together, the discounted sale at 121 W. Wacker Drive reflects a downtown office market still working through distressed assets even as some investors circle the Loop in anticipation of Google's eventual arrival. Whether that specific calculus drove the Wacker Drive deal has not been independently confirmed by the buyers themselves.
