Will the stately, riverside Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, the last major convention hotel built downtown, change its name to Westin?
The 1,200-room behemoth, completed in 1992, became part of the Starwood Lodging Trust last fall when Starwood bought ITT Corp., owner of the Sheraton chain.
Starwood has about 650 hotels in 70 countries, controlling major flags such as Sheraton, Westin and the Caesars gaming hotels plus smaller boutique operations. Eleven are in the Chicago area, among them the Westin Michigan Avenue, the Westin River North, the Lake Shore Drive Days Inn, the Raphael, the Tremont and the Midland.
James Mogush, newly named general manager of the Sheraton Chicago, said Starwood is considering switching some of its properties tto different chains to solidify their brand identity.
“There is a possibility some could be reflagged, and it could happen in Chicago as much as anywhere else,” he said. “A Westin in X city could become a Sheraton because it fits the brand better, and vice versa.”
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Westin is the more upscale brand, with a 4-to-4 1/2-star rating, while Sheratons are generally 3 to 3 1/2 stars, he added. The Sheraton Chicago bills itself as a 4-star hotel.
Another Starwood brand is the St. Regis, a luxury boutique name, which might be appropriate for a spot like the Tremont. There are no candidates here for a Caesars flag yet, however.
Mogush comes from the Westin chain, with 30 years of experience including a period as general manager of the Westin Michigan Avenue in the 1980s. So he could become a Westin man once again.
His new job is evidence that Starwood is shifting personnel among the new hotels to meet needs. And locally, Mogush said he’s already sent the message to the other area hotels that he has an opening for a midlevel food and beverage manager.
Other synergies will be in combined reservations operations and promotional programs such as frequent-guest clubs, he added.
Mogush said he’s not worried about the flurry of plans for new hotels in Chicago, where up to 9,000 rooms are on the drawing board. Most are small, boutique operations that don’t really compete with the Sheraton, he noted.
“This year is the best we’ve ever had in this hotel, and the booking pace is ahead of what we anticipated. Next year and 2000 should be good, too. The near future is very positive,” he said.
Plaza sweet: A deal is reportedly close for the sale of Madison Plaza, the 915,000-square-foot office building at 200 W. Madison St. that is the headquarters of Hyatt Corp.
The buyer said to have the inside track is Overseas Partners Capital Corp., an Atlanta real estate investment firm that purchased 333 W. Wacker Drive last year. Overseas Partners, a subsidiary of an offshore financial firm, wouldn’t comment on the report.
The sellers are a partnership of Equitable Cos., an IBM Corp. pension fund and a Japanese financial group. The bid is said to be in the $200-a-foot range, which would bring the price to more than $180 million.
The sale could be a disappointment for Toronto-based TrizecHahn Corp., whose office division is headquartered here and which has been looking for another major Chicago property since it acquired the Sears Tower earlier this year. TrizecHahn has also reportedly lost out on the bidding for the Amoco Building.
Quest to acquire: Why is a Wisconsin utility company making a big push as a land developer in Illinois? Because a public utility, as a big landholder, can have a natural attraction to the real estate business.
Wispark Corp., a wholly owned, non-regulated subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp. that is developing a 150-acre business park in Elgin, has other interests in the area and is planning to expand its presence with other deals.
The company was so successful with its first development, an industrial park in Pleasant Prairie, just across the Wisconsin border, that Wisconsin Energy saw a growth opportunity.
“We were asked to grow the company base because the company did such a wonderful job in southeast Wisconsin, and the Chicago area is an extension of that,” said Mark Ebacher, Wispark regional director.
“The expansion to this marketplace is really the result of a need to grow real estate development services, and is in no way energy-related,” he added.