An Illinois developer used a scrivener's-error clause to claim the air rights; the court voided it
An Illinois developer used a scrivener's-error clause to claim the air rights; the court voided it
2026-09-10 · Illinois · Courts
What happened. On August 19, 2025 the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, Second Division, affirmed summary judgment voiding a developer's special amendment in River North Partners Holdings, LLC v. Museum of Broadcast Communications, 2025 IL App (1st) 241772-U. It is a Rule 23 order and is not precedential. The Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal on January 28, 2026, No. 132401 — so it is final.1
The building is 9 West Kinzie / 360 North State Street, a former parking garage the Museum converted into a commercial condominium.
What the developer tried
A unilateral post-conversion “special amendment” to the declaration, characterised as correcting a scrivener's error, which would have converted an exclusive right to build a rooftop deck into exclusive ownership of the building's entire air rights.
The holding
The amendment “was not a correction of a clerical or scrivener's error, but a substantive change; therefore the special amendment is invalid.”
And the consequence flowed downstream: purchasers of the units and the air rights took nothing.
What a reserved special-amendment power actually is
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