Dec. 22--It's take two for one of Chicago's highest-priced homes: A 20,000-square-foot Palladian villa-style mansion in Lincoln Park listed for $16.9 million went under contract Monday.
For the second time in less than six months, the owner of the 17-room mansion, Tampa Bay Rays part-owner Timothy Mullen, has found a buyer. He had gone under contract on it in July, but that deal fell through.
Mullen, the former CEO of First Options, paid $9.5 million in 2002 to buy the six-bedroom mansion. He paid $1.23 million the following year for an adjacent parcel, which now houses the property's two-bedroom guesthouse.
In all, the mansion and guesthouse extend across five city lots. Features include an indoor pool and spa, a home theater, a six-car garage, 10 1/2 baths and skyline views.
Mullen first listed the mansion and property in June 2014 for $18.75 million. He held firm at that asking price for more than a year. After the first deal fell through, he cut his asking price in October to $16.9 million.
If the deal closes for anywhere near its asking price, it would be one of the Chicago area's highest-priced sales in history.
Sales that have closed for more than Mullen's asking price? Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky's $19.5 million purchase last year of a lakefront mansion in Glencoe, two sales of imprisoned insurance mogul Mickey Segal's 17.5-acre lakefront estate in Highland Park, a deal for a full-floor penthouse in Chicago's Park Tower, which changed hands earlier this year for $18.75 million, and Vistex CEO Sanjay Shah's $17 million purchase in 2014 of the top-floor penthouse unit in the Trump International Hotel Tower.
Mullen's mansion currently has the second-highest asking price of any residence in the Chicago area. Edging it out is the four-story, 12,000-square-foot limestone mansion at 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive, owned by the International College of Surgeons and used for offices. That mansion came on the market in September for $17 million.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
