Distress dominoes keep falling for Alvarez & Marsal in the Windy City, but one out-of-town owner’s pain is a local investor’s deep discount.
Chicago-based investor Sanjay Gandhi has struck a deal to acquire the 23-story vintage office high-rise at 205 West Randolph Street, CoStar reported. Gandhi is swooping in to buy the property at auction after its previous owner, New York-based Alvarez & Marsal Property Investments, balked on nearly $19 million in debt tied to the property.
While the exact sale price for the 104-year-old, 207,500-square-foot Loop building remains under wraps, market insiders expect it to trade for significantly less than the $18.7 million outstanding balance of the loan. The transaction is being brokered by Newmark’s Jim Postweiler, Peter Harwood, Derek Fohl and Jack Trager on behalf of the seller.
For Alvarez & Marsal, parting ways with the property marks the firm’s fourth distressed Chicago office surrender in a relentless string of local market defeats. In recent weeks, the firm handed Boise, Idaho-based lender A10 Capital the keys to the 271,000-square-foot office tower at 205 West Wacker Drive, after defaulting on a $35 million mortgage loan with nearly $28 million still unrepaid. Alvarez also sold two other office properties at 542 South Dearborn and 459 West Erie streets for $8.5 million, significantly less than the $24.5 million the firm paid for them in 2018. The buyer was a joint venture involving developer Drew Millard that plans to convert them into apartments.
Alvarez originally acquired the Randolph Street building for $28.7 million in 2017, assuming a commercial mortgage-backed securities loan in the process, according to the outlet.
However, as the office market took on water amid the pandemic, the building’s occupancy plummeted to a dismal 62 percent. Alvarez stopped making loan payments in late 2023, triggering a foreclosure suit on behalf of bondholders in early 2024. By August last year, special servicer LNR Partners had officially seized the asset.
Alvarez & Marsal’s retreat from 205 West Randolph Street highlights a brutal reality for office landlords who bought before the coronavirus crisis. The firm has repeatedly found itself on the wrong side of the Chicago office sector’s historic slump, opting to surrender distressed properties rather than throw good money at buildings with evaporating rent rolls and shortened lease terms.
Enter Gandhi, who’s building a reputation as one of Chicago’s active office bargain hunters. In August 2024, he snagged a 10-story building at 29 North Wacker Drive for just $11.3 million — a big haircut from the $29.7 million Allstate paid for the same property just two years prior. Gandhi’s strategy relies on resetting the cost basis so low that he can afford to offer highly competitive rents and generous tenant improvement packages to lure businesses back. He also owns office buildings at 218 and 26 South Wabash Avenue.
— Sam Lounsberry
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