Dream of Owning the Purple Hotel Alive Again

By Prescott Carlson in Miscellaneous on Jan 13, 2009 10:50PM

Lincolnwood's Purple Hotel is back up for sale, after a previously announced deal fell through. We know -- kind of hard to imagine why in this real estate market a company might get cold feet about taking on a massive demolition and development project. Plans hit a brick wall when the joint venture between Inland Real Estate Acquisitions and TMK Development asked Lincolnwood to cough up $20 million to pay for the parking garage, and when the village refused that was pretty much it. We're sure it didn't help that Inland has about $2 billion in debts coming due as well. But according to Lincolnwood's community development director Timothy Clarke, there were never high hopes for the project to begin with:

The plan "didn't have a lot of meat to it," Mr. Clarke says. "It never really went beyond a glorified paper napkin sketch of the site."

The Purple Hotel shut its doors in 2007, after it reportedly had fallen into gross disrepair -- there were numerous complaints made about bug and rodent infestation, mold, and lack of running water. Hey, a "fixer upper" should fetch a low, low price in this economy, so the dream of running your own fleabag hotel could come true -- Fawlty Towers 2009, anyone?

Photo by Chicago Outfit