The buyer who paid $11 million in October for an eight-bedroom Georgian-style mansion on 8.68 acres in Lake Forest — a mansion that is known for its extensive gardens — has been revealed to be Brookfield, Wisconsin-based multifamily residential developer Cal Akin, who plans to renovate the mansion’s interior and enhance its grounds.
The $11 million paid is the seventh-highest amount any Chicago-area buyer has paid for a home in 2025, eclipsed only by two $30 million-plus megasales of lakefront mansions in Winnetka, a $14.5 million sale in Kenilworth, a $12 million sale in Winnetka, an $11.4 million sale in Winnetka and an $11.25 million sale in Lake Bluff.
Known as Camp Rosemary and located just southeast of Lake Forest College’s campus, the estate previously had been owned by the late Kennetha Love “Posy” Krehbiel, who owned it for 34 years until her death at age 83 in 2022. Krehbiel had bought the estate — at that time, just 4.79 acres — in 1988 with her then-husband, former Molex Co-Chairman John H. Krehbiel Jr., for $1.95 million.
Now, Akin has hired Zoran Mijatovic’s Libertyville-based Landmark Luxury Group as general contractor, and Akin has received permission from Lake Forest officials to begin interior demolition on an exploratory basis to determine the scope of work needed. In addition, Akin is working with what he has characterized as a “celebrated UK garden designer” to improve the estate.
“I look forward to working with everyone @ Lake Forest as we renovate this property with sensitivity to its origins but bringing the mechanicals into the modern era,” Akin wrote in an email to Lake Forest officials on Nov. 25. “I love the grounds and we are working with a celebrated UK garden designer to enhance everything.”
In a brief phone call with Elite Street, Akin declined to comment further. By phone, Mijatovic also declined to comment.
Built in the early 1900s and designed by noted architect Benjamin Marshall, the mansion was constructed for wholesale and retail magnate John T. Pirie Sr., whose father had helped found Carson, Pirie Scott & Co. After Pirie’s death in 1940, the mansion later was owned by patent and copyright attorney Charles W. Hills Jr., who died in 1943, and then by Laurance H. Armour Jr. of Armour meatpacking fame. The estate’s landscaping was designed in the 1920s by noted landscape architect Rose Standish Nichols.
After buying the estate from Armour, the Krehbiels expanded the property to its current size by buying several adjoining parcels in the 1990s, and they also enlarged the mansion in 1996 through an addition designed by architect Thomas Beeby, who also was enlisted to design a pool house and guesthouse on the property.
The Krehbiels spent many years upgrading the estate’s gardens, which today have 21 outdoor garden “rooms,” along with bentgrass lawns, seasonal garden beds, hedges and espalier trees.
The 11,787-square-foot mansion has nine bathrooms, seven fireplaces, a portico, an attached coach house, a conservatory, a three-story gable, elevator access to all four levels, high ceilings, millwork and a bifurcated staircase with a library at the mezzanine.
Posy Krehbiel’s family first listed the estate in August 2024 for $14.975 million and never budged on the asking price. Akin bought the estate through an Illinois limited liability company whose manager is an opaque Delaware limited liability company that masks his identity.
The estate consists of five parcels, which together had a $126,323 property tax bill in the 2024 tax year.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
