{"id":497307,"date":"2026-01-06T20:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/497307\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T20:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:42:15","slug":"meet-buyer-who-paid-7-4m-for-a-ken-griffins-gold-coast-condo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/497307\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet buyer who paid $7.4M for a Ken Griffin\u2019s Gold Coast condo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlie Mills, the chairman and former CEO of Northfield-based Medline Industries, was the buyer who paid<\/a> $7.4 million last April for billionaire Ken Griffin\u2019s unit on the 35th floor of the Gold Coast building at 9 W. Walton St. Mills and his wife now plan to spend another estimated $2.75 million to build out the space, according to a building permit filed with the city.<\/p>\n

Griffin famously paid $58.75 million in 2017 for the top four floors in the building at 9 W. Walton, but he never built them out and left them as raw space. After declaring in 2022<\/a> his intention to move his company and his residence to Florida, Griffin took a major loss on the four floors, selling them for a total of $34.9 million, or a loss of more than 40%.<\/p>\n

Griffin paid $12.5 million in 2017 for the 7,327-square-foot unit Mills purchased. Griffin first listed the 35th-floor unit in 2022 for $14 million. He took the condo off the market the following year, and then sold it for $7.4 million in April 2025 in an off-market deal to an opaque land trust that masks its beneficiary\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

But a December 2025 building permit on file with the city of Chicago lists Mills as the current owner of the full-floor unit and shows that he hired architect Michael Waechter and contractor Wujcik Construction to proceed with the initial buildout, which will have an estimated cost of $2.75 million for materials and labor.<\/p>\n

In a brief interview with Elite Street, Mills called 9 W. Walton \u201ca very, very nice building, and my wife and I hope to build a very nice home there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In buying a condo in the building at 9 W. Walton from Griffin, Mills joins Gov. JB Pritzker, who paid<\/a> $19 million in 2024 to buy the top two floors of the building from Griffin. The buyer who paid $8.5 million in April for Griffin\u2019s 36th-floor unit at 9 W. Walton remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

Pritzker has not yet taken out a permit with the city to build out his top two floors at 9 W. Walton.<\/p>\n

Medline underwent an initial public offering<\/a> in December. Mills\u2019 family previously had sold a majority stake in Medline to private equity firms in 2021.<\/p>\n

Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlie Mills, the chairman and former CEO of Northfield-based Medline Industries, was the buyer who paid $7.4 million…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":497308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[64,960,50482,5386,1818,1370,50,4329],"class_list":{"0":"post-497307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-elite-street","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-real-estate"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115850100695370319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}