Kelleher sells $40m pad

DEVELOPER Garrett Kelleher is a relieved man after the $40 million (€28m) penthouse in his unfinished Chicago Spire was sold — to the man who built his billions on Beanie Babies toys.

Ty Warner signed the contract to buy the two-floor penthouse at the top of the 150-storey spire overlooking Lake Michigan.

While the price was not disclosed, it was on the market for $40m, though in this straightened times Mr Warner is likely to have been able to strike a hard bargain with Dubliner Kelleher.

Even at significantly less than $40m, the 10,000sq ft, four-bedroom apartment is the most expensive piece of real estate ever sold in the midwest city.

The sale is a financial and public relations boost to Mr Kelleher as work on the planned highest residential property in the world — and the tallest building in the US — has slowed in the face of the financial meltdown.

A year after work began at the site, it remains nothing more than a hole in the ground.

Kim Metcalfe, a spokesman for Mr Kelleher’s Shelbourne Development, told Chicago reporters that the pace of work at the site has slowed but not stopped.

She insisted, however, that no sales contracts had been cancelled. The developers report 358 of the planned 1,194 apartments — with price tags from $750,000 (€549,000) to $40m — have been sold.

A large amount of funding for this huge development has come from Anglo Irish Bank, one of the financial institutions covered by the Government’s €400 billion guarantee. Ms Metcalfe said Anglo Irish, which in recent years has rapidly increased its US property portfolio, is still involved in the project.

Real estate watchers in Chicago believe Mr Kelleher may have doubled the number of apartment sales before work can start on building up the winding tower.

Mr Warner is the highest profile buyer of an apartment in the spire. He built his fortune on the sales of Beanie Babies, a favourite toy of children for a number of years in the 1990s.

The genius of Beanie Babies was that kids were encouraged to collect a lot of them. Mr Warner leveraged profits from the toy into a hotel and resort empire with the purchase of the Four Seasons in New York and in California, a ranch in the same state and a resort in Hawaii.