Who Lives in this Modest Home? You Might be Suprised.

Most of metro Chicago’s 14 Forbes-listed billionaires live in the baronial custom-built mansions and lavish penthouses that you’d expect, but there’s one who lives in a modest brick tri-level near O’Hare International Airport.

Poultry pasha Joe Grendys is worth $1.8 billion, which ranks him 13th of Chicago’s richest 14 people, according to the Forbes 400 list that came out in late September. The CEO of Koch Foods has told reporters in the past that he still lives in the house where he grew up, on the Far Northwest Side of the city.

The Grendys family’s 1,300-square-foot house is valued at $272,000, according to the Cook County Assessor.

That’s chicken feed compared to the $29 million that Chicago’s richest person, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, spent last year for two floors in the Waldorf-Astoria in the Gold Coast, part of what the New York Times recently called Griffin’s “record-setting real estate spending spree.”

Griffin, whose $7 billion fortune ranks him as the 69th wealthiest person in America, in recent months has spent $200 million for a New York penthouse and $60 million for one in Miami Beach, the newspaper reported.

Grendys, who is in his early 50s, may also have multiple properties, like many of the billionaires on this list, but by calling the O’Hare-area house his home, he follows the lead of Warren Buffet. America’s second-richest man identifies a home he’s owned in Omaha, Neb., since 1958 as his main address.

Here’s where all of Chicago’s 14 Forbes-listed people live, when they’re in town. (None of the 14 responded to requests for comment.)

To continue reading, please visit the Crain’s Chicago website.