Chicago’s convention officials long have dreamed of when historic Motor Row — just west of McCormick Place — could be transformed from its dilapidated state into an entertainment zone where visitors could cap their day with a grilled steak and a sizzling show.
But the collapse of the city’s 2016 Olympic bid, which had fueled hopes for the Near South Side, coupled with the flameout of the real estate and lending markets, left development largely dormant along South Michigan and Indiana avenues, between Cermak Road and the Stevenson Expressway.
The malaise left the city at a critical disadvantage to entertainment-laden convention center rivals, both domestically and globally.
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When Tony Hu, the city’s most prominent Chinese chef, travels to China, for instance, he said convention centers are surrounded by “wonderful restaurants, wonderful bars, wonderful shops.”
In contrast, the area around McCormick Place “has been a ghost town,” said Chris Schneider, who runs a recording studio and private party venue on Motor Row.
As the economy slowly improves, plans to repurpose Motor Row’s buildings from their uses in the early part of the last century are resurfacing. Designed by notable architects, buildings include deep, high-ceiling auto showrooms and facades accented by glazed brick and swirling terra cotta.
Some of the city’s prominent restaurateurs — including Chinatown’s Hu, Harry Caray’s Grant DePorter and The Firehouse’s Matthew O’Malley — are weighing redevelopment plans in the compact commercial corridor, which remains pocked with for-lease signs and boarded-up historic hulks. The Rockford-born rock band Cheap Trick is planning a music venue and museum, while neighboring Pressure Point Recording Studios is building its own live music space, to be named “Riff.”
A hotelier that operates the historic Pfister in downtown Milwaukee is sizing up an abandoned Cadillac dealership for a boutique hotel directly across from the McCormick Place West Building, while Teatro ZinZanni, a Cirque du Soleil-type dinner theater company, is eyeing a boarded-up showroom next door. Some long-time Chicago Mercantile Exchange traders are financing the launch of Broad Shoulders Brewing, a microbrewery and tasting room, with help from city tax-increment financing.
Meanwhile, real estate/eminent domain attorney Langdon Neal said he has been approaching property owners near McCormick Place over the past 30 days to gauge their interest in selling parcels to the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns the convention center and would like to see more hotel and entertainment offerings nearby. The authority declined to comment.
The Motor Row area is also steeped in the city’s blues history as onetime home to Chess Records and other recording studios, and in its Prohibition-era gangster past as the former stomping grounds of Al Capone. It’s in the 2nd Ward, whose alderman, Robert Fioretti, reports increasing numbers of inquiries from potential developers.
“It’s still very difficult in the financing world out there, but I’m more optimistic than before,” he said. “It took awhile to build the universe, but we don’t have that much time.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has turned up the heat on convention officials to regain footing against such entertainment-heavy rivals as Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. Toward this end, the city last fall rezoned portions of South Michigan and Indiana avenues for entertainment uses. The ordinance prohibits further residential development — with the goal of separating residents who cherish their sleep from future revelers partying into the night.
The CTA plans to build a Green Line “L” station to serve the immediate area; its opening is scheduled for late 2014. And on Friday, Emanuel held a press conference to highlight $65 million in public infrastructure projects planned for the Near South Side, some of which had been announced earlier. The projects include $5.8 million in TIF funds for streetscape improvements on Motor Row, as well as improvements to mass transit, a new Chinatown library branch and expansion of the southern end of Grant Park.
“Those are the types of public investments that will multiply private investment,” he said in a later interview.
Like Printers Row in the South Loop and the West Fulton Street market area, Motor Row “has the bones” for redevelopment and should be aided by the influx of residents into the downtown area, he said.
But jump-starting the languishing area will not be easy. A long-running foreclosure battle has stalled potential hotel and entertainment projects on nearby blocks — developments that could provide a much-needed stream of evening visitors. And a stately icon at the south end of Motor Row, the former Chicago Defender building, at one time an exclusive auto club, is in foreclosure and is boarded up.
McCormick Place, Soldier Field and U.S. Cellular Park can provide potential customers, but only in spurts when events are under way.
“This area will be challenged unless and until a critical mass of developments begins to bring locals and visitors here on a daily basis,” said urban project adviser Rob Hunden.
Pressure Point Recording Studios, for one, is aiming for Chicago patrons — from students living downtown to South Loop condo dwellers — at its live music space, which it hopes to open in December.
“The McCormick Place situation — it’s a bonus,” said Schneider, the studio manager. “That’s part of the reason they want to develop this area, because people are constantly running up to the North Side.”
The risks for these sorts of projects are high unless there is significant assistance in the form of property tax breaks, historic tax credits or favorable financing terms, said Hunden, president of Hunden Strategic Partners.
CME traders Bob Lassandrello and Gary Lark are in line to receive $628,000 in TIF assistance for their Broad Shoulders Brewing, a $2.5 million project under construction at 2337 S. Michigan Ave. and scheduled to open in January. A city development panel recommended the assistance, which still needs a city council vote.
Building out the brewery in what used to be a truck refurbishing facility is a complex endeavor, with tasks ranging from installing an elevator in the long, narrow space to rounding up an adequate number of original glazed bricks to use on the facade, said brewery manager Frank Lassandrello, a craft brewer who is Bob Lassandrello’s son.
“We were very fortunate to receive the grant from the city,” he said. “We’re on the frontier of this neighborhood. … We’ll be hiring employees and we hope to be generating foot traffic with our tasting room.”
An open question for the brewery and other prospective business ventures is what will become of the former Chicago Defender property, a prominent clock-tower structure that a group of investors led by O’Malley had hoped to redevelop. Fioretti said O’Malley continues to weigh potential projects in the area. The restaurateur could not be reached for comment.
Potential Motor Row investors also are keeping an eye on two large parcels east of the historic district, along the north side of Cermak Road, where major hotel-and-retail development has been on hold because of another foreclosure struggle. A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Friday gave the longtime ownership group, which includes developers Pam Gleichman and Karl Norberg, a last chance to avoid repossession by lender Centerpoint Properties Trust.
The group, Old Prairie Block Owner LLC, said it has a buyer willing to pay $150 million for the property — about twice what it owes Centerpoint — and to lease it back to the group for 99 years. Judge Jack Schmetterer gave the group three weeks to show the proposal had viable financial backing.
Meanwhile, Gleichman is moving ahead with separate projects on Motor Row, where her LandmarkAmerica Illinois LLC controls six properties. She is assembling partners and trying to line up financing with the goal of starting redevelopment next year. She expects projects would make use of federal historic preservation tax credits.
First-phase plans include remaking a former Rambler dealership at 23rd and Indiana, across from the McCormick Place West Building, into a mixed-used development with restaurants, shops and a coffee bar on the first floor and potentially Teatro ZinZanni upstairs. “Nothing is firm at this point,” said theater company spokeswoman Tina Gonsalves.
A boutique hotel is scheduled for the former Cadillac showroom next door, and Gleichman is in talks with Milwaukee-based hotel owner and operator, Marcus Hotels & Resorts.
The company is evaluating construction costs and potential brand options, said David Merritt, senior vice president of development, noting the project would require public assistance.
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“It will take quite a lot to reposition that closed industrial building,” he said.
Two other hotel developers are scouting the area as well, Fioretti said.
On South Michigan, Gleichman is working to assemble four other projects, the highest-profile one involving a Cheap Trick performance venue, guitar museum and restaurant, the latter to be operated by DePorter, CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group.
DePorter also might open an Irish pub, while chef Hu is weighing a restaurant called The Bund, named after the waterfront area in Shanghai and aiming for what he describes as a “1930s Shanghai night life” atmosphere. Gleichman is also aiming for a barbecue restaurant with live R&B; music, modeled after the B.B. King blues clubs, said Gunnar Falk, vice president at LandmarkAmerica Illinois.
The evolution will take some time, noted restaurant operator DePorter.
“You need critical mass versus any one restaurant opening by itself,” he said. “When venues come down there all at once, it will be the place to be.”
Tribune reporters Mary Ellen Podmolik and Jon Hilkevitch contributed.
Twitter @kathy_bergen