A slice of farmland, located in what is now Wilmette, IL, has sold—and the last time it changed hands was in 1844.
The property was purchased from Hoffman Higgins Homestead Farm Foundation in October 2025 for $1.4 million in an off-market deal. The land at 201-203 Ridge Road hadn’t been sold since horses and buggies ruled the road and the 11th president of the United States, James Polk, was in the White House.
“This remarkable property hasn’t been touched in nearly 200 years, and we’re thrilled to reimagine its future,” purchaser and developer B3 Companies wrote on LinkedIn.
B3 Companies, a development, investment, and construction company based in Chicago, plans 24-unit boutique apartments on the smidge under an acre. The complex will target empty nesters looking to downsize into two or three-bedroom rentals.
The company specializes in transforming land sites that have sat dormant for many years for various reasons.
“This was the perfect location given the proximity to the highway and downtown,” B3 partner Simon Berg tells Realtor.com®. “It checked all the boxes.” (Adam Jidd is Berg’s business partner in the firm.)
The original owners were German immigrants Bartholomew and Veronica Hoffmann and their eight children, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
Back then, land was cheap. The family snapped up 100 acres outside of the Windy City near what would become upscale suburb Gross Point for $6 an acre or about $25,700 in today’s money. It’s unclear if they bought it from another private owner or from the government.
The Hoffmann descendants put the land into a trust in 2020. The acre of property sold to B3 was the last of the once-giant parcel.
“The [Hoffman] foundation liked that we’ve created a name for ourselves revitalizing dormant areas,” says Berg. “It was a meeting of the minds.”
Planned for the property is a luxury apartment complex with plenty of green space, possibly a rooftop deck, and outdoor paths that merge with Lovelace Park.
The property wasn’t just bare land. An old building, possibly dating to 1908 and jammed full of antiques, such as an old horse-drawn carriage, old farming tools, a vintage car and sewing machine, was included in the sale.
“You just don’t see stuff like this anymore,” Berg exults in a LinkedIn video as he walks through the building. “I don’t know what this is, but it looks cool,” he says of a vintage wooden barrel.
Hoffmann descendants had owned various businesses in that spot over the last 150 years, and the building acted as a storage unit for many artifacts.
“This is real estate at its finest,” Berg says in the video. “Sometimes you buy vacant land, and sometimes you buy something so full of history that it’s crazy.”
Berg plans to donate some of the artifacts to the local historical society but others he wants to incorporate into the new apartment complex’s design to honor the property’s history.
And being an antique lover, he picked out a handcrafted wooden wheelchair to keep for himself.
“There are a lot of things I’d like to keep but my home is only so big,” he tells Realtor.com.
Glencoe Estates
B3 Companies—which has three facets, B3 Homes (luxury residential), B3 Commercial (multifamily and mixed-use), and B3 Industrial (flex industrial)—is also behind development of the former Hoover Estate in Glencoe, IL.
The Hoover Estate had been owned since the 1920s by the family of the Hoover vacuum company founder, William Henry Hoover.
The parcel had been sold to another developer in 2019 for $10 million but development stalled as the purchase became bogged down with controversy and a lawsuit.
The property had contained a large manor home, a coach house with living quarters and an attached greenhouse, and a stable building, all in classic late Tudor Revival architectural style that many wanted to preserve. But finally the developer was able to raze the estate.
B3 then snapped up the 14-acre North Shore property in 2024 for $12.9 million. Berg’s company subdivided the land at the 1800 block of Green Bay Road into 29 ready-to-build lots.
Renamed Glencoe Estates, empty plots begin at $950,000, with finished homes projected to have a starting price tag of over $2 million. About 10 homes have already started construction or been finished.
“The only remnants of the estate are the gates, pillars and some of the limestone that came from The Mayflower,” says Berg.
Berg says he preserved that part of the estate and is having it restored for incorporation into the new development.
“I’m an old soul,” he says. “I love things from the past.”