Photo: Sergio and Banks
A mansion on Bellevue Place in the Gold Coast sold yesterday for $7.5 million, the highest-priced sale of a Chicago-area home this year. That eclipses the $7.2 million sale price of a home on Grant Place in Lincoln Park. That sale had sat at the top of the list since it happened in January. The Bellevue Place house has six bedrooms, seven full baths and stylish finishes including mirrored walls, herringbone-patterned floors with a light-toned stain, and glass handrails on the staircase. (See pictures below.)
It was sold by Bart Przyjemski and Anita Lisek, the couple who head Chicago homebuilding firm Noah Properties.
In March 2014 they paid $3.1 million for the site, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. At the time, the 1890s home on the site was badly run-down inside, Lisek said.
The facade had landmark protection, so "we took everything down but the facade," she said. "Everything from there back to the attached garage is new." The old house was about 5,000 square feet and the new one is nearly 10,000, she said.
Lisek declined to say what they spent to build the house.
The couple listed it in February with Beata Gaska of Sergio & Banks Real Estate. They priced it at just under $9 million, but in July they cut the price by $1 million. It went under contract in early September, and the sale closed yesterday.
The buyers are not yet identified in public records, and Lisek declined to name them.
The sale is the highest-priced home by Noah to date, but Lisek said that given how fast this one sold, "we may have another one coming in the Gold Coast soon." The 15-year-old firm has built numerous projects for rent or for sale in several Chicago neighborhoods.
There are 31 homes in the city listed for sale at $7 million or more as of today. Several of them have been on the market for over a year—and in some cases, a few years—although citing an average market time is misleading because many have gone on and off the market so that their latest market time now registers as a short stint like 20 or 30 days.