The former CEO of a Schaumburg-based pharmacy benefits management firm paid $8 million in September for a six-bedroom mansion on Lake Michigan in Wilmette — another in a series of lakefront mansions on the North Shore to sell this year for stratospheric prices.
Mark Thierer was chairman and CEO of Catamaran Corp., which is now part of UnitedHealth Group, and is now executive chairman of New York-based Rightway Healthcare. He and his wife, former Motorola engineer Nasrin Thierer, bought the 8,282-square-foot home from Bradford Whitmore, chairman of publicly traded battery maker Ultralife Corp., and his wife, Mary Whitmore.
Built in the mid-1990s, the 17-room mansion was not formally on the market. Instead, it was listed for sale in real estate agents’ private listing network — a lower-key way for agents to market homes without details being available to any member of the general public who has an Internet browser. Within the private listing network, the mansion listed for $7.95 million.
The home has nine full bathrooms, three half-bathrooms and four fireplaces. The recently updated kitchen features a walk-in pantry and a butler’s pantry with a wine refrigerator. The primary bedroom suite has two large walk-in closets and a sitting area, while other rooms in the home include a library, a sunroom and a third-floor workout room. The lower level is outfitted with an art studio and a rec room.
Outside, the 0.6-acre property touts a patio, a deck wrapping around three sides of the mansion, lush gardens and a beach house with a kitchen and a great room. The home also has a four-car heated garage.
The Whitmores paid $2.2 million for the property in 1994 and then built the mansion. The Thierers, who also own a 47th-floor condo in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood that they bought in 2012 for $3.59 million, bought the lakefront mansion through an opaque land trust.
Dinny Dwyer, who represented the Whitmores, declined to comment on the sale. Debbie Hepburn, who represented the Thierers, declined to comment on her clients’ identity, but said they plan to keep the mansion and not demolish it.
The mansion had a $165,000 property tax bill for 2019.
In the past few months, several higher-priced sales have taken place on the lakefront in Cook County’s North Shore suburbs, including an unidentified buyer paying $14.4 million to combine two parcels on Sheridan Road in Winnetka, an unidentified buyer paying $11.75 million for a lakefront mansion in Kenilworth and an unidentified buyer paying $9.5 million for a vintage house on the lake in Winnetka.
Away from the lake, an unidentified buyer paid $8.75 million for a 27,000-square-foot mansion in unincorporated Winnetka in June, according to real estate agents’ records. The recorded sale price was $7.25 million — a difference likely explained by the inclusion of furniture or other personal property in the deal.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance writer.
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