17-Dec-14 – Its occupants have included a cable car powerhouse, Michael Jordan’s Restaurant, and currently Gino’s East. The 127-year-old landmark at 500 North LaSalle Street in River North now has a new owner.

Jaime Javors, identified in published reports as the buyer, paid $7.1 million for the three-story, 17,400 square foot, one-tenant property. In announcing the sale on Monday, The Boulder Group, the Northbrook, Illinois, company that represented the seller, identified the buyer only as “an affiliate of a Midwest real estate investment fund.”

Cedar Street Cos. and Frontline Real Estate Partners, LLC, owned the building for about one year. They purchased it at a bankruptcy auction in 2013 for $4.3 million. Qualteq, Inc., had owned it. The credit and gift card company filed for protection from creditors in 2011.

The building’s tenant, Gino’s East, is one of the original Chicago-style pizza restaurants. After moving there in July 2013, Gino’s invested $1 million in upgrades. Their lease expires in 2023.

Before Gino’s, it was LaSalle Power Co., a restaurant that closed in 2012. It was Michael Jordan’s Restaurant from 1993 to 1999.

When it was built in 1887 by North Chicago Street Railroad Company, it housed engines that moved two miles of cable through channels laid in the streets on the near north side of Chicago and in the Loop. Those cables, in turn, pulled thousands of cable cars along 82 miles of track.

(Above) A drawing by P. F. Goist, circa 1882, of a cable car powerhouse prototype by Poole & Hunt, the same company that later built the powerhouse in Chicago.

The building was designated an official Chicago landmark in 2001.