Former Chicago Bulls point guard Randy Brown has paid $586,000 for a West Loop bachelor pad, and has sold his house in Olympia Fields for $395,000.
A native of the West Side and a basketball star at Collins High School, Brown, 32, played for the Bulls from 1995 to 2000, including on three Bulls championship teams.
A free agent after last season, Brown signed a three-year deal with the Boston Celtics worth $7.5 million.
In 1995, Brown and his then-wife, Katrina, paid $380,000 for a single-family house in Olympia Fields’ Trails of Olympia Fields subdivision.
About two years later, the Browns purchased a single-family house in River Forest for $390,000.
As part of a divorce agreement in 1998, Randy Brown got the house in Olympia Fields, while Katrina Brown received the house in River Forest, according to public records.
Now, with the newly single basketball star no longer interested in a house, his listing agent said, he has just sold the residence in Olympia Fields–the closing took place on Tuesday–and has bought a place in the brand-new, Fulton Court condominium development in the West Loop.
Because Brown purchased his unit directly from a developer, no real estate listing information was available about its features.
However, town homes in Fulton Court, which have started in price at $365,000, have two to four bedrooms, 19-foot-wide floor plans, attached garages, 10-foot ceilings, maple hardwood floors, roof decks and gourmet kitchens with stainless steel appliances.
One of Brown’s neighbors is Chicago Cubs second baseman Eric Young, who was one of the first buyers in the development when he paid $531,000 in March 2000 for his unit.
Brown’s house in Olympia Fields, which first went on the market more than a year ago, most recently was listed for $449,900. It has five bedrooms, a large master bath, white ceramic floors in the kitchen and foyer and a white-on-white decorator-designed kitchen. It also has a theater, a bar room, a game room and a first-floor family room with a wet bar and an adjoining outdoor deck.
Update: Former Bull Ron Harper has once again reduced the listing price of his 10-room contemporary in Northbrook. The house, which is near Glenbrook South High School, went on the market more than six months ago for $719,000. It has subsequently been reduced to $705,000, and now down to $695,000.
Harper, who now plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, purchased the home in 1994 for $610,000. Joan McGowan of Koenig & Strey remains Harper’s listing agent.
In what is believed to be the most expensive single-family listing in Chicago-area history, a Lake Forest family has placed the Thorndale Manor estate on the market for $17 million.
The estate’s 25-room mansion, which was built in 1916, was designed by famed architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. In addition, the gardens on the 19.45-acre property, at 1510 N. Green Bay Rd., were designed by acclaimed landscape architect Jens Jensen.
“It’s one of the last great estates on the North Shore,” said listing agent Marina Carney Vernon of Baird & Warner’s Lake Forest office. “And everything’s intact. The house has been well preserved, because it has not been through renovations.”
The estate was built for railroad magnate Darius Miler, and has been owned by the family of Ronald P. Boardman since 1939. Boardman, who was an executive of Marshall Field & Co. and later a banker and a partner at E.F. Hutton & Co., died in June 1993 at age 93.
Boardman’s 89-year-old wife, Frances, who was a former treasurer of the Lake Forest Garden Club and a senior resident member of the Women’s Athletic Club from 1963 to 1981, died less than a month after her husband.
The Boardmans’ sons have lived on the estate since then, Vernon said. Twenty of the mansion’s rooms were transformed in April and May 1995 by interior decorators for the Lake Forest Chapter of the Infant Welfare Society, which made the mansion its 1995 Lake Forest Showcase House. About 10,000 paying guests passed through the mansion’s rooms.
———-
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, Ill., 60611. E-mail: rgoldsbo@enteract.com
