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The son of philanthropists whose name graces the music school at Indiana University is selling a 100-year-old apartment building
off Massachusetts Avenue that he owns with another investor.
John Jacobs and a Cleveland-based partner have put a Friday deadline on offers for the 62-unit Richelieu apartments, a two-building
property at the intersection of North and East streets and Mass Ave.
The property containing mostly one- and two-bedroom units has been owned by Jacobs since 2003. He put it on the market in
late 2007 but pulled it the next year when the real estate market started to unravel, said Amy Burmeister, a broker with CB
Richard Ellis who has the listing.
It came back on the market in March, and the price has since been reduced from $4.95 million to $4.65 million. Burmeister
said the Richelieu is 95 percent occupied and renters pay between $600 and $1,400 a month.
Burmeister noted that the asking price, which amounts to $75,000 a unit, is less than the $89,000 a unit paid in January
2009 for The Argyle, a 36-unit apartment building just across East Street. But The Argyle, unlike the Richelieu, has retail
space on the first floor.
Burmeister is hopeful her client will have several offers to choose from after the deadline passes. She said well-located
properties with stable ownership are drawing more interest from potential buyers than they were a year ago.
The Richelieu isn’t in financial distress, but another local property owned by Jacobs, Meridian-Shoreland Tower apartments
at 3710 N. Meridian St., is in receivership. Flaherty & Collins principal Jerry Collins was appointed receiver for the
195-unit building in March, at which time his company took over management of the property.
The property had been managed by locally based Buckingham Properties, which manages the Richelieu and Jacobs’ other
properties here: Overlook at Valley Ridge, on Southport Road, and Summerwood on Towne Line on the north side.
Jacobs’ parents, David and Barbara, were IU alums. His father, a real estate developer and former owner of the Cleveland
Indians baseball team, died in 1992. Barbara Jacobs died in 2005, not long after donating $40.6 million to the Indiana University
School of Music, which now bares the family name. Cleveland’s baseball stadium also was once known as Jacobs Field.
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