Oprah Winfrey is selling Harpo Studios in Chicago - home of her syndicated talk show for more than 20 years - to a developer for around $32 million, the Associated Press reported.
Winfrey filmed her syndicated talk show "The Oprah Winfrey Show," at the studios from 1990 to 2011, putting an obscure stretch of the Near West Side on the map. She ended the talk show to start the Oprah Winfrey Network on cable.
"We have entered into a purchasing agreement with Sterling Bay for the four-building Harpo Studios campus in Chicago's West Loop," Harpo said in a statement to Crain's Chicago Business. "We expect the transaction to be closed in 30 days. The property will be leased back to Harpo for two years and the studio will continue to produce programming for OWN."
The studio, which employs 200 workers, will remain on the 3.5 acre property for another two years. Harpo expects to close the transaction in 30 days, the Associated Press reported. It includes more than 170,000 square feet of office and production space with addresses on Washington Boulevard and Carpenter, May and Aberdeen streets.
According to Crain's Chicago Business, portions of the property could maintain their current use as TV studios and editing rooms.
Winfrey first came to Chicago in 1984 to do WLS-TV's morning show, A.M. Chicago." The show was no. 1 in the market a month after its debut and was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 1985. Her show then moved to Harpo Studios in 1990.
Winfrey is credited with transforming the "once-gritty industrial area to a neighborhood filled with families and trendy restaurants," the AP reported.
In 2011, the street outside Harpo Studios was named "Oprah Winfrey Way" by then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
