Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.Sam Zell ran a Chicago-based real estate empire that he began building when he was still a college student, along the way gaining a reputation as a brash and scrappy operator unafraid to make gutsy investment calls.
Those investments included taking the Tribune Co., private in 2007 in a leveraged buyout. Despite selling a number of assets, the company filed for bankruptcy in late 2008 as the newspaper industry crashed.Zell, 81, died of an unknown cause on Thursday, May 18, according a statement released by the company he founded, Equity Residential.
Zell was born to Jewish immigrants from Poland, and grew up in Albany Park and later in north suburban Highland Park. After graduating from Highland Park High School, Zell attended the University of Michigan for both his undergraduate and law degrees.Perhaps known most for his real estate investments in areas like offices, apartments and manufactured housing, Zell perpetually gazed at other industries in a relentless drive for making money.
“Even as a child, I looked at things differently,” he told the Tribune in 2004. “I had so much innate self-confidence. Why is someone doing it the way they’re doing it? I can do it better.”