Purple hotel: Let it just die, already

The foreclosure follies concerning the Purple Hotel (former site of Capricons 5-7, 9-11 and Reactor in 2005 and 2006, among other fannish things) continue with no apparent end in sight:

First Midwest Bank, current holder of two mortgage notes on the Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood, has put them up for sale.

The bank chose Podolsky Northstar CORFAC International and the brokerage team of Randy D. Podolsky, managing principal, and Adam J. Tarantur, senior vice president, to find a buyer for the 5.28-acres site at the corner of Lincoln and Touhy Avenues.

A Cook County judge confirmed last February a consent decree declaring the building at 4500 W. Touhy Ave. a safety hazard.

The judge also granted the village permission to tear down the building in August at the property owner’s expense if he hadn’t done so — or fixed a multitude of problems that resulted in building code violations.

Donald Bae of Skokie, the hotel’s owner, has been seeking buyers for the property for years without success.

The bank filed a foreclosure suit against Bae, after he failed to repay the loans at maturity.

Now the bank is seeking purchasers who realize the value of the underlying real estate that secures the notes, Podolsky said.

The "value of the underlying real estate" would seem to be somewhat...er...obscured by the highly problematic building that stands on top of it as well as the 31 code violations that played a large part in causing it to close down in January 2007. As I've pointed out previously, I went to the last fannish-oriented convention it hosted (Reactor in November 2006) and saw what the place was like. It wasn't pretty.

Whatever party buys the notes will have the opportunity to either own the property if the notes are not redeemed, or to obtain whatever value from the sale of the notes, he added.

“Lincolnwood’s consent decree to knock down the building, if the village wishes to do that, would have an (negative) impact on the value of the land,” Podolsky said.

“But if a buyer was identified very soon, that person could speak to the village about the demolition of the building. However, the village’s rights are independent of the lender’s rights, so just because someone buys the notes, it does not mean the village would be willing to wait.”

I'd love to tell Mr. Podolsky what "waiting" for Donald Bae and Co. to sell the building got the Village of Lincolnwood in the first place, but I suspect he knows; like everyone else, he's just unwilling to say the words "zip", "zilch" or "nada" out loud.

As usual, I have to wonder why the village didn't just throw eminent domain into the mix, since paying for the property and its demolition probably wouldn't have been nearly as pricy as when it was open since any market value the PH had probably declined steeply when it started turning into an under-maintained - and  ultimately abandoned - wreck. Whatever the reason, the village board - and the rest of the village - will probably continue to be stuck with the "Purple Hulk" in one form or another until my two-year wager comes to full maturity. If they do away with it before May 8th, 2012, I'll drink a toast to the place at L. Woods across the street and have fond memories of SF conventions past, including the first legitimate fan-run one (Capricon 5, in 1985) I ever went to. If it's still standing, I'll be doing it with a bottle of single malt scotch I'm buying for the occasion instead.