Chicago’s AFL-CIO investment trusts take a pass.
When Chicago was in the running for the 2016 Olympics, the local AFL-CIO Investment trusts signaled interest in helping foot the bill for an Olympic Village in Chicago. The trusts represent 24 trades.
But two union funds identified by a local labor leader and a Spire spokeswoman as having expressed interest, the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust and the union-backed life insurer ULLICO Inc., are taking a pass, according to top executives there. Representatives of two others, the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust and the Multi-Employer Property Trust, say the Spire isn’t a suitable investment for them.
“It’s not something we’re able to do,” says Edward Smith, president of ULLICO. “Unfortunately, these are just very difficult markets.”
The idea of putting union funds to work, to provide work not as popular in Chicago as one might think. The boo birds vocal on this one.
below: the 2,000-foot-high 150-story condominium tower has remained a large hole in the ground for over a year ever since financial woes stopped construction work.
below: the latest 3D renderings.
For $40,000,000 you can get the 10,000 square-foot penthouse condo, which by-the-way was bought by Ty Warner, creator of the Beanie Baby toys; for $750,000 a bottom-end 543-square-foot starter unit. The average per-square-foot cost of a bit under $2,000 marks a new top price point in Chicago.
below: the latest 3-D interior renderings.
above: santiago calatrava, the architect, in the Chicago Spire sales office in NBC Tower.
The Spire was supposed to be finished by 2012 and the Irish developer staged a global marketing campaign. Buyers have snapped up a third of its 1,194 luxury condominiums to date.
Calatrava has placed a lien on the building, claiming that he was owed $11.34 million. But while in Chicago last month, he said it was his “personal wish” that the four-year-old project “was not dead,” noting that some of his projects have taken up to 13 years to complete.
Resources:
the chicago spire
blair kamin – not DOA yet
chicago architecture info
chicago real estate daily
lynn becker
savills
NYC’s top 10 crazy things that didn’t get built
