News
REVVING UP A NEW HOTEL
October 19, 2011
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| Aries Capital bought the historic Chicago Motor Club building at 68 E Wacker at auction in June, and the $9.7M sale closed last month—but that's just the beginning of transforming the building and adjacent vacant lot (most recently used for office space in the early '90s) into a 118- to 209-unit boutique hotel. We took this pic from the building's rooftop, which will be home to a restaurant to rival The Wit. Aries' Andrew Wilson took us on a tour to open the Chicago Open House event this past weekend. He tells us his team has been in talks with a number of hotel operators who want to take over the building after Aries uses historic tax credits to cover up to 20% of the building's renovations. But what Aries found when exploring the building was quite a surprise. | |
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| Some floors of the building had been abandoned with paint peeling off the walls and office furniture deteriorating. Andrew says one office even had a worker's pictures and coat still there. (Oh, we've been looking for that coat.) Others had been renovated to serve as a model for a condo conversion project that never took off. But Aries was happy to find that the large mural of the US and all its highways that the Motor Club installed and the nickel-finished balcony banisters in the lobby were able to be cleaned and restored. Andrew anticipates it'll make a unique lobby that will define the hotel as good competition with other new hotels in the area, including a potential John Buck project at 200 N Michigan and the Langham at 330 N Wabash. |
