(Above) Museum of Broadcast Communications from across State Street in 2011.

By Steven Dahlman

Aug. 20, 2025 – A claim by the Museum of Broadcast Communications that they owned the air rights above their building in River North has been rejected by the Illinois Appellate Court.

The dispute dates to 2012 when the museum owned the four-story commercial building at State & Kinzie. Facing financial issues, the museum decided to form a commercial condominium association, divide the building into five condo units, sell one of the units, and keep the other four.

The unit that was sold was on the first floor of the building. The buyer, River North Partners Holdings, LLC, which had a 37 percent ownership of the condominium, then leased the space to STK Restaurants.

In 2019, when the museum offered for sale three units on the two upper floors, as part of the deal they offered building “air rights,” or the right to develop the airspace above a building. Fern Hill, a real estate development company, purchased the units and the air rights for $6 million. They formed three separate LLCs, each taking title to a unit.

Special amendment corrected condo declaration error, said museum

To assert its exclusive ownership of air rights, and right to develop the building roof and space above it, with no upper boundary, the museum had added a special amendment to the condo declaration, saying the amendment was a correction, possibly due to a clerical error, to the declaration.

The museum said the declaration meant to say that its right to develop the building rooftop also included all airspace above the building.

When River North Partners Holdings learned of this, they sued the museum and the three LLCs, saying the amendment was not a correction but a substantive change and therefore invalid. The trial court agreed and voided the special amendment, and the defendants appealed.

River North Partners Holdings said the museum lacked the authority to assert exclusive ownership and the airspace was instead owned by the condo association and all unit owners.

In affirming the trial court ruling, the appellate court concluded the rooftop development rights section of the condo declaration was not originally intended to include the airspace.

“The special amendment was not meant to merely remedy some kind of drafting error but instead was intended to create a substantive right for the Museum that did not previously exist,” wrote Justice Nathanial Howse (left) in the August 19 ruling.

The building was sold in 2023 to Fern Hill, which had exercised its right to buy the two other floors in addition to the two floors that it owned. The museum closed to the public on April 30, 2023.