HFF Arranges Financing for $361M Purchase of Chicago Office Property

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

HFF did double duty for 10 and 120 South Riverside Plaza, a 1.4 million-square-foot office complex in Chicago. The commercial real estate and capital markets services provider marketed the property on behalf of TIER REIT Inc. and, as it has now been revealed, orchestrated financing on behalf of the buyer, an affiliate of Ivanhoé Cambridge advised by Callahan Capital Properties, which shelled out $361 million to acquire the two-building asset late last year.  

HFF, which secured a fixed-rate loan, had a great deal to work with in its pursuit of financing for Ivanhoé Cambridge’s acquisition of 10 and 120 South Riverside Plaza. To begin with, there’s the solid sponsorship. Montreal-based Ivanhoé Cambridge is a real estate subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s leading institutional fund managers, and CCP is led by Tim Callahan, former CEO of Trizec Properties Inc. and Equity Office Properties Trust.

Then there’s the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-designed property itself. The twin 21-story towers, located in Chicago’s coveted West Loop submarket, are LEED Gold-certified Class A buildings with a combined occupancy of roughly 90 percent and a tenant roster featuring such names as information technology firm CDW and Zurich American Insurance Co.

The lending community took notice. “This was a low leverage balance sheet request and we received quite a bit of interest from a host of capital sources,” Timothy Joyce, managing director with HFF, told Commercial Property Executive.