Chicago Blackhawks head coach Alpo Suhonen has paid $420,000 for a two-bedroom condo in west Lincoln Park.
The Finnish-born Suhonen, who is the first European head coach in National Hockey League history, was hired in May to lead the Blackhawks after working as an assistant coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The coach, whose three-year contract reportedly pays him close to $475,000 a year, ran for a spot in the European Parliament in 1999 and once produced a Finnish version of the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
In west Lincoln Park, Suhonen’s four-room condo is in a historic building. The unit has a 15- by 8-foot Palladian window, 18- and 14-foot ceilings, French doors leading to a private deck with a skyline view, a two-sided fireplace and maple floors. The condo originally was listed for $425,000. Nancy Thomas of Koenig & Strey represented the sellers.
– Channel 2’s vice president and general manager, Walt DeHaven, has paid $1.35 million for a large Victorian in east Lincoln Park. DeHaven, who was hired to head “CBS-2” in August, made headlines in October, when he pulled the plug on the highly regarded but short-lived, no-frills 10 p.m. newscast anchored by Carol Marin.
Built in 1891, DeHaven’s recently renovated 10-room house has five bedrooms and three fireplaces. The three-story, all-brick home is on one of east Lincoln Park’s more attractive blocks.
According to listing information, the house includes a country kitchen, large bedrooms and extensive original details, including a balustrade. The house was listed at $1.395 million and sold in for less than two weeks. Before its renovation, the house was listed for $860,000 in 1998 and sold that year for $760,000.
DeHaven’s house is just a block and a half north of “Fox-32” anchor Walter Jacobson’s house. Jacobson paid $750,000 in 1994 for his place, according to public records.
– In a feature in last month’s North Shore Magazine, local author and Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg described his experience last year in moving from the city to the suburbs.
Steinberg recalled that one inquisitive neighbor, curious about the sale price of his gray Queen Anne, stopped her car in the middle of the street and screamed at him, “How much did you pay for that?”
The neighbor, Steinberg explained, said she was “just trying to save a trip to the village hall.”
And although Steinberg wrote that he went ahead and told his neighbor his sale price — “I figured I might as well. They print the sale price of every house in the local paper” — he chose not to share that information with the magazine’s readers.
But Upper Bracket will share: Steinberg paid $370,000 in June (although the sale closed in October) for the house on a half acre, according to public records.
In conjunction with that purchase, Steinberg also sold his vintage, top-floor, four-bedroom duplex in east Lincoln Park for $318,000.
– NBC “Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw is having a bit of trouble sealing a deal for a large piece of waterfront property in New York’s Adirondack mountains.
New York magazine reports that the anchor wants to build a house on the 50-acre parcel on Mirror Lake. However, his multimillion-dollar land purchase is being held up by the tenants of a small rental house in the middle of the property.
The tenants are under a five-year, $150,000 lease, and Brokaw reportedly has not been able to reach a deal yet for their departure.
The property was in the news last summer when the owner lent it in August to President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when they visited the area on vacation.
The owner’s present, Alpine-style log home — which was created from Pacific Northwest spruce and is the main house on the land — has vaulted ceilings and a steam shower, according to other published reports. The heavily wooded property also has riding trails and a pond.
Brokaw also owns a ranch in Livingston, Mont., a house in Pound Ridge, N.Y., which is in Westchester County, and a principal residence in Manhattan at 941 Park Ave. About a year ago, he sold another home, in Cornwall, Conn., for $645,000, according to public records.
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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
