Former Gov. Jim Thompson has purchased a single-family vacation home on 8.8 acres in Harbert, Mich., for $330,000, according to multiple listing information.
Illinois’ chief executive from 1977 to 1991, Thompson, 62, is chairman of the law firm Winston & Strawn. Thompson currently lives in a $1.125 million condominium unit in the Chandler building on the Gold Coast, although he has resided in several places on the North Side since he left the governor’s mansion.
Thompson and his wife, Jayne, bought the property in Harbert as a “private getaway,” according to Gerald Olson of Olson Real Estate, who represented the couple.
“It’s a beautiful, wooded retreat with a pool,” said Olson, who declined to share other details about the property. “We’re proud to have him here.”
According to listing information, the approximately 20-year-old, 7-room house has three bedrooms, a fireplace in the master bedroom and a variety of furnishings, including antiques and wicker furniture, that were included in the sale price. The 1,730-square-foot house originally was listed for $379,000, and sat on the market for more than a year before Thompson’s purchase.
Thompson previously has owned other property in Berrien County, Mich. In buying in Harbert, he joins other Chicagoans, including film critic Roger Ebert and Channel 5 anchor Joan Esposito, whose vacation home in Harbert is on the same street as Thompson’s.
Nadra Kissman was the listing agent for the seller, a Chicagoan from the Lincoln Park area.
– Former Blackhawk defenseman Gary Suter has sold his house in Oak Brook’s Brook Forest subdivision, accepting a more than 20 percent drop from his original, $649,000 listing price.
Suter, who signed a 3-year, $10 million deal with the San Jose Sharks over the summer, lowered the listing price for his 12-room, 5-bedroom Colonial to $575,000 in September, but less than one month later accepted an offer of $512,000.
“I don’t think it’s a reflection of properties in Oak Brook,” said listing agent Catherine Condon of Porterfield Hearthstone. “They got what they paid for it ($487,000 in 1994).
“But when a couple has relocated and they are owning and maintaining two homes, there comes a point when that gets to be too much. When sellers have a vacant home as the Suters did, they can be very motivated.”
Suter’s former house, featured here on July 26, is just around the corner from the home of Blackhawk Chris Chelios, who paid $675,000 for his house in 1990.
– Recent Nobel Prize winner Ferid Murad, whose scientific discovery more than 20 years ago helped set the stage for the development of the anti-impotence drug Viagra, has sold his Lake Forest mansion for about $2.3 million.
A physician and former vice president at Abbott Laboratories, Murad, 62, is a professor at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. It was in Houston in 1977 that Murad discovered nitric oxide’s effect on smooth muscle cells.
He shared this year’s $978,000 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine with two pharmacologists. Their collaboration discovered that the body uses nitric oxide to regulate blood vessels. It already has resulted in a host of medical benefits, including the development of Viagra, the reduction of high blood pressure in infants’ lungs and the diagnosis of some inflammatory diseases.
Murad’s 70-year-old house, which was designed by David Adler and was on the market for well over a year, originally was listed for $3.2 million. The house, located on Lake Road just south of the Lake Forest Cemetery, sits on two lakefront acres and boasts 200 feet of private beach, a guest suite, and a four-car garage.
– A 10,000-square-foot Prairie-style mansion in Oak Park that was designed by E.E. Roberts has gone on the market for $1.15 million.
Built in 1904, the 16-room, 7-bedroom house at 620 North Euclid has five fireplaces, original quarter-sawn woodwork, flower and leaf design cove molding in the living room, original stained and leaded glass windows and doors, a grand covered front porch, an oak-paneled dining room with a beamed ceiling and a 50-foot ballroom. The house also has seven progressive levels and a porte-cochere.
Steven Nasralla of F.C. Pilgrim and Co. has the listing.
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Have a tip about a home sale or a piece of property being put on the market that involved a well-known Chicagoan or a well-known piece of Chicago real estate? Write to Upper Bracket, c/o Chicago Tribune, Real Estate section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. E-mail: rgoldsbo@enteract.com
