Weeks after opening, the property that houses West Loop’s buzzy new Guinness Open Gate Brewery — already a booming tourist attraction — is set to change hands.
Fred Latsko, a Chicago real estate developer, has put the building at 901 W. Kinzie St. up for sale and hired commercial brokerage firm JLL to find a buyer.
Latsko Interests manages real estate in six states, but most of its commercial holdings are in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. A mix of luxury and national companies operate in Latsko buildings, including Lanvin, Lululemon, Citi Bank and Intermix.
According to CoStar News, six brokers have been retained by JLL to find a buyer for the 15,000-square-foot space. The brewery will remain in operation even if the building changes hands, Irish Central reported on Wednesday.
“While the landlord is selling the property, the business is not for sale,” said a spokesperson for Guinness Open Brewery Chicago. “Guinness is fully committed to the space and the West Loop community and is thrilled that we’ve had such a strong start to two weeks.”
Chicago’s highly anticipated Guinness Brewery was announced in 2021 and opened to thirsty crowds on September 28th. Twelve to 16 beers, a mix of Irish specialties and local draft beers, are available on tap daily, plus there’s a full-service restaurant and a bakery.
Guinness has also committed to donating 10,000 loaves of bread annually to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the Tribune previously reported.
Latsko applied in April to rezone the area around the brewery from an industrial and commercial area to a mixed-use downtown district, according to city documents.
Guinness has been found in taps around the world for more than 260 years, starting with the St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin. Arthur Guinness, the company’s first master brewer, famously signed a 9,000-year lease on the brewery in 1759 and began exporting the now legendary Guinness black porter beer in 1796. Guinness is now produced in more than 50 breweries worldwide, but only open breweries Gate Breweries invite the public for tours.
Open Gate Breweries also opened in Dublin in 2015 and in Baltimore in 2018. With both locations owned by Guinness, Latsko and JLL see the Chicago brewery as a unique opportunity to bring a glass to private ownership, Latsko said in a statement.
“It is time to pass the torch, or in this case the tap, to a new administration,” Latsko said in a statement.
Keely Polczynski, managing director of capital markets at JLL and one of the brokers who represented Latsko in the sale, declined to comment Thursday, saying the brewery was not yet officially on the market.
JLL has not yet contacted potential buyers and has not made any projections about how much the brewery might sell, Polczynski said.
A source close to the deal told CoStar News earlier this week that brokers expect to fetch more than $20 million for the space that formerly housed the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. The brewery remains in operation even if the property changes hands.
A source close to the sale said Guinness Brewery’s presence in the space was secured by a 10-year lease that would remain in place even if the building was sold.
CoStar News also reported that Guinness expects to generate net operating income of more than $1 million each year.