In such a polarized country, even billionaires like JB Pritzker and Ken Griffin don’t let their political rivalry stop them from doing business.

The Illinois governor paid the founder of the Citadel investment firm $19 million earlier this month for the top two floors of a 38-story luxury building on Chicago’s Near North Side where Griffin once lived, sources familiar with the transaction told the Tribune with.

The combined purchase at 9 W. Walton St. represents the highest price anyone has paid for a home in the Chicago area this year and is the fourth-highest price anyone has ever paid for a home within Chicago city limits has. But it also meant that Griffin, who moved his company to Florida two years ago, lost more than $15 million on the two condos in the real estate deal with his political nemesis.

A Pritzker spokesman would only say: “The governor and first lady recently purchased a condominium in Chicago. They love the city and Chicago has been their home for many years.” A spokesman for Griffin did not immediately respond for comment.

The rivalry between Pritzker and Griffin dates back to at least 2018, when the Democrat largely self-financed his campaign to defeat Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, a wealthy stock investor whose reelection was helped with more than $20 million by Griffin .

The billionaires’ battle escalated two years later when Pritzker spent more than $56 million of his fortune to unsuccessfully push through a proposed state constitutional amendment that would move Illinois to a graduated income tax system with higher, wealth-based levies. Griffin led the opposition to the proposed change and also spent nearly $54 million of his own money.

At some point during the back-and-forth over the high-profile proposal, Griffin sent an email to Citadel employees accusing Pritzker of being a “shameless master of personal tax avoidance.”

When Pritzker ran for his second term in 2022, the two were at it again as Griffin bankrolled a slate of Republican candidates to run for every statewide office, including Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin for governor.

Despite Griffin’s $50 million support for Irvin, he finished third in the GOP primary, which was won by former state senator Darren Bailey. In the run-up to the primary, Pritzker donated $24 million to the Democratic Governors Association, which in turn ran television ads slyly encouraging Republicans to vote for Bailey, calling him conservative and “too extreme” for Illinois.

Pritzker ultimately defeated Bailey in the general election by about 12 percentage points. Also that year, Griffin returned to his home state of Florida and, upon his departure, voiced harsh criticism of Chicago’s crime rate.

Pritzker called Griffin and Richard Uihlein, a billionaire donor who supported Bailey’s unsuccessful run for governor, “two of the biggest Republican MAGA billionaires in the country.”

According to Forbes, Pritzker, the heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, is worth about $3.7 billion.

While living in Illinois, Griffin was long considered the state’s wealthiest resident. The latest Forbes ranking estimates that Griffin has a net worth of more than $40 billion.

He founded Citadel in Chicago in 1990 and grew it into one of the largest hedge funds in the world.

Over the years, he has also been a benefactor to various civic causes in Chicago, donating more than $600 million to institutions such as the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Chicago. Earlier this year, the Museum of Science and Industry officially added Kenneth C. Griffin to the top of its name, a renaming that had been in the works since his $125 million donation in 2019.

To date, no public record has specifically identified Pritzker as the sole purchaser of Griffin’s two Walton condos.

Public records reviewed by the Tribune show that Chicago Skyline Properties LLC, a Delaware limited liability company formed last year, was the buyer of the 15,000 square feet of vacant space, which includes a private pool and rooftop pavilion.

Real estate agent Katherine Malkin, who represented Pritzker, and brokers Nancy Tassone and Emily Sachs Wong, who represented Griffin, all declined to comment on the transaction Tuesday.

Griffin purchased the two full-floor units — each with 7,500 square feet of floor space — in late 2017 for $21,166,000 and $12,949,500, respectively, for a total of $34,115,500. The sale of the top floor 38th floor – complete with private pool, terrace and rooftop pavilion – and the 37th floor for $10 million and $9 million respectively on November 12 means Griffin has a combined total of more than $15.1 million Millions of dollars have been lost through the building’s top two floors.

In total, Griffin paid $58.75 million at the end of 2017 for four floors that he never expanded and finished. Of the other two floors he still owns, Griffin currently has the 7,500-square-foot unit on the 36th floor at 9 W. Walton actively for sale for $8.5 million, while the 35th floor is not actively marketed to the public becomes.

Pritzker wouldn’t be the only billionaire living at 9 W. Walton. Steven Crown of Chicago’s venerable Crown family paid $17.4 million in 2022 for the full-floor unit on the 34th floor, just one level below Griffin’s four units.

Pritzker’s package purchase of the two units represents the fourth-highest recorded amount ever spent by anyone on a residence in Chicago. Some who built their own mansions probably paid more, but as real estate ownership changes go, the Pritzker-Griffin transaction trails only Griffin’s previous $58.75 million package purchase of the 9 W. Walton units. dollars in 2017 and Mexican billionaire German Larrea’s $20.56 million purchase in 2022 of a 10,000-square-foot Penthouses on the 71st floor of the Residences at the St. Regis Tower and private equity manager Bryan Cressey purchased the 14,260-square-foot full-floor penthouse on the 89th floor of the Trump International Hotel & Tower for $20 million in 2022. Dollar.

Additionally, billionaire retired filmmaker and “Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson paid $18.75 million in 2015 for the full-floor penthouse unit on the 65th floor of Park Tower, and then paid The couple paid $11.2 million eight years later for the 8,000-square-foot, full-floor penthouse condo on the 66th floor of Park Tower. That means that even though there were eight years between the two contracts, Lucas and Hobson have now spent a total of $29.95 million to build a 16,000-square-foot duplex unit in Park Tower, which they are in the process of building and completing.

What Pritzker will do with the two side-by-side villas he owns on Astor Street on the Gold Coast is yet to be determined. Through a Delaware LLC, Pritzker paid $14.5 million in 2006 for his primary residence—a 12,500-square-foot vintage mansion on Astor Street—and later that same year he paid another $3.675 million for a 6,387-square-foot vintage Mansion next door. The $14.5 million he paid for the larger mansion in 2006 was the highest price anyone had ever paid for a Chicago residence up to that point.

Pritzker left the adjacent mansion vacant, and according to a Cook County inspector general’s report, the future governor had contractors remove five toilets as part of a renovation project in the early 2010s to convince Cook County’s assessor to classify it as “uninhabitable.” to reduce the property tax burden. The breaks initially saved Pritzker $330,000 in property taxes. In 2018, he agreed to repay the Cook County treasurer that $330,000.

Bob Goldsborough is a freelancer.