Local owner doubles down

Golub & Company bought out Affinius Capital in a $64 million deal for Century Tower, a 293-unit apartment building at 182 West Lake Street in the Loop. (therealdeal.com) The property is a 28-story Art Deco high-rise that Golub and an Affinius predecessor acquired in 2018 for $60 million in a condo deconversion, then renovated into rentals. Crain’s reported the venture put the tower up for sale in July 2025 before this week’s partner buyout. (therealdeal.com) (chicagobusiness.com) Crain’s said Century Tower was about 95 percent occupied in July 2025, with average leased rent of $2,146 per month, or $3.60 per square foot. The building’s average unit size was 596 square feet after a 2019 renovation. (chicagobusiness.com) The buyout lands as downtown Chicago apartments keep getting tighter while new construction stays thin. Crain’s reported top-tier downtown net rents rose 6.25 percent year over year in early 2025, and just one large apartment building with 149 units was expected to deliver downtown that year. (chicagobusiness.com 1) (chicagobusiness.com 2) The Real Deal reported in January 2026 that Chicago multifamily construction starts were projected to fall to their lowest level since 2012. Marcus & Millichap said Chicago-area apartment deliveries were expected to drop below 4,000 units in 2026, with vacancy around 3.8 percent at the end of 2025. (therealdeal.com) (rejournals.com) Golub is also pushing deeper into the Loop’s residential reset through office conversions. WTTW reported in January that the firm’s 30 North LaSalle plan would turn 16 floors of a 44-story office tower into 349 apartments, including 105 affordable units, with help from a $57 million city subsidy. (news.wttw.com) That LaSalle Street program had six approved conversion projects as of January 2026, with 1,765 planned apartments and $316.5 million in city subsidies. City officials said the effort grew out of the post-pandemic drop in office use in the Loop. (news.wttw.com) Century Tower also sits a block from the Thompson Center, where Crain’s said Google’s renovation is expected to bring thousands of employees to the area starting in 2027. CBRE’s marketing for the tower argued that move would support occupancy and rent growth nearby. (chicagobusiness.com) Instead of exiting after testing the sales market last year, Golub chose to own more of the building outright. In a Loop with fewer new apartments coming online and more office buildings being remade into housing, that is the position the company is taking with Century Tower. (therealdeal.com) (chicagobusiness.com)