Weeks after opening, the property housing the buzzy new Guinness Open Gate Brewery in West Loop — already a booming tourist attraction — is set to change hands.
Fred Latsko, a Chicago real estate developer, has listed the building at 901 W. Kinzie St. for sale and hired the commercial brokerage firm JLL to look for a buyer.
Latsko Interests manages properties in six states, but most of its commercial holdings are in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. A mix of luxury and nationwide companies operate from Latsko buildings, including Lanvin, Lululemon, Citi Bank and Intermix.
Six brokers from JLL have been tasked with finding a buyer for the 15,000-square-foot space, CoStar News reported. The brewery will remain operational even if the building changes hands, Irish Central reported Wednesday.
“While the landlord is selling the property, the business is not for sale,” a Guinness Open Brewery Chicago spokesperson said. “Guinness is fully committed to the space, the West Loop community and is thrilled to have had such a strong opening two weeks.”
Chicago’s hotly anticipated Guinness brewery was announced in 2021, and opened Sept. 28 to thirsty crowds. Twelve to 16 beers, mixing Irish specialties and local drafts, are on tap every day, alongside a full-service restaurant and bakery.
Guinness has also committed to donating 10,000 loaves of bread a year to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the Tribune previously reported.
Latsko applied in April to have the area around the brewery rezoned from an industrial commercial district to a downtown mixed-use district, according to city documents.
Guinness has been found on 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 took out a 9,000-year lease on the brewery in 1759 and began exporting the now-iconic black Guinness porter beer in 1796. Guinness is now produced at more than 50 breweries worldwide, but only Open Gate Breweries welcome the public for tours.
Open Gate Breweries also opened in Dublin in 2015 and Baltimore in 2018. As both of these locations are owned by Guinness, Latsko and JLL are pitching the Chicago brewery as a unique chance to raise a glass to private ownership, Latsko said in a statement.
“It’s time to pass the torch, or in this case, the tap, to new stewardship,” Latsko said in a statement.
Keely Polczynski, managing director of capital markets for JLL and one of the brokers representing Latsko in the sale, declined to comment Thursday, saying that the brewery was not yet officially on the market.
JLL has not started contacting potential buyers and has not made projections for how much the brewery might sell for, Polczynski said.
A source close to the deal told CoStar News earlier this week that brokers expect to fetch upward of $20 million for the space, previously home to the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. The brewery will remain operational as the property changes hands.
A source close to the sale said that the presence of the Guinness brewery in the space is backed by a 10-year lease, which will remain even if the building is sold.
CoStar News also reported that Guinness expects to net upward of $1 million in operating income each year.
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