Zara Billionaire's Pontegadea Pays $550M for 1 N. Wacker Tower

Pontegadea, the family investment vehicle of Zara founder Amancio Ortega, has closed on 1 N. Wacker Drive, the 51-story Loop office tower, paying about $550 million, according to CoStar, Orange County Business Journal and a Bloomberg report cited by American Bazaar. The seller is Irvine Company, the Newport Beach based developer that had owned the full building since 2015.

The deal closed Oct. 13, 2026, and includes Pontegadea assuming a $353 million CMBS loan that Irvine Company placed on the property in 2021, the outlets reported. None of the three has published the price as a figure independently verified against a county document; this story attributes the price and terms to that reporting rather than treating it as our own confirmed number.

Why it matters

Trophy Chicago office towers have mostly been trading down or going to foreclosure this cycle. Irvine Company’s own building just down the river at Illinois Center went to a sheriff’s sale after a $260 million foreclosure, reported here. A European family office paying roughly what the seller paid 11 years ago, rather than a steep discount, is a signal that at least one buyer sees a floor under the best-leased Loop assets.

CoStar frames the deal as Chicago’s highest-priced office transaction in more than four years, a superlative attributed to CoStar’s own reporting rather than asserted here as fact. Pontegadea already owns other Chicago real estate, including a residential tower and a hotel, so this adds an office tower to a growing local portfolio built mostly with cash rather than new debt.

The numbers

Irvine Company’s position in 1 N. Wacker dates to 2011, when it bought a 49 percent stake from Hines, then became full owner in 2015 by buying out the rest, a transaction that outlets put the company’s total cost at around $540 million. On that basis, the reported $550 million sale price is roughly a $10 million gain over an 11 year hold, before accounting for the $353 million loan balance Pontegadea is assuming.

The 1.4 million square foot tower, built in 2001, is reported at about 94 percent leased, with CoStar naming PwC, UBS and Fitch Ratings among the tenants. Eastdil Secured represented Irvine Company in the sale, according to the reporting.

What’s next

The sale had not yet appeared in Cook County Clerk recordings as of this writing. A deed or mortgage assumption document should eventually post with the Clerk’s Document Search, which would let the price and loan assumption be confirmed against a public record rather than outlet reporting alone; this desk will update the figures if that record differs. Watch also for whether Pontegadea’s bet on a fully leased trophy tower draws other buyers back into the Loop office market, where most 2026 activity has still been distressed sales and foreclosures.

ON THE RECORD: CoStar, Orange County Business Journal and a Bloomberg report cited by American Bazaar put the price at about $550 million and the assumed loan at $353 million. The sale has not been located in Cook County Clerk recordings as of Oct. 27, 2026.

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