Purple hotel update

[the_archfiend]

Sometimes you just have to scrape for information like this.

The Lincolnwood BoT has hired a consultant to help create a tax increment finance (TIF) district in order to dispose of the Purple Hotel and its surrounding environs, but the funniest part of the Lincolnwood Review piece has to be this:

Village Attorney Steven M. Elrod stated in a Jan. 8 letter to Donald Bae, owner of Village Resorts, that the hotel site, located in a "highly visible and heavily populated area" of Lincolnwood, has deteriorated into "a blighted, dangerous and unsafe condition." In that letter, Elrod also referenced warnings in two earlier letters (Nov. 11, 2008, and July 15, 2009), that detailed the code violations on the property.
 

Elrod asked the court for fines of $1,000 per violation per day since Nov. 11, 2008, the date the owner was first notified of the violations; the cost of corrective action or demolition of the 293-room, seven-story structure; as well as court costs and attorneys fees.

Lincolnwood also sued Bae in September of 2006 because of mold and environmental problems caused by the deteriorating state of the hotel, and therefore, prevented the building from being inhabited, Elrod added.

(Personal note: anybody who had been to Reactor shortly after that lawsuit was filed knows firsthand of the mold problem - especially since the writing desk in my room was being eaten by a blob of the stuff.)

However, instead of repairing the structure, which was built in 1960, Bae closed it in January of 2007 and put it up for sale.

And, unsuprisingly, there were no takers. There probably still aren't.

That's one incredible slide from the way the place was when I went to my first Capricon there in 1985.