Bank begins foreclosure process over Lincolnwood’s Purple Hotel

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Updated: June 13, 2011 12:23AM

The First Midwest Bank has begun foreclosure proceedings against the owner of the Purple Hotel for $4.2 million.

The bank filed on April 26 with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds requesting repayment of the loan it previously had granted on the 293-room building at 4500 W. Touhy Ave., which is owned principally by Donald Bae of Skokie.

Bae has been trying to sell the long shuttered property at Touhy and Lincoln Avenues for years without success.

In the meantime, village officials, who were tired of seeing no action to improve the building they deemed blighted because of dozens of code violations, went to court over the issue.

And Cook County Circuit Judge Kathleen Pantle on Feb. 14 confirmed a consent decree declaring the building a safety hazard and granting the village permission to tear it down.

The village board then took the next step toward redeveloping the property and a few surrounding it. The board created the Lincoln-Touhy TIF District on the site.

“The foreclosure suit will have no impact at all on the village’s plans,” said Village Attorney Steven Elrod of Holland & Knight.

“If the village were to demolish the building, which it has a right to do, and file a lien against the property, which it has a right to do for any cost it incurs, that lien under Illinois law is an automatic superior lien to all other interests in the property,” he added. The village is seeking estimates for the hotel’s demolition at this time, since the court gave Bae until Aug. 1 to bring the building up to code, Elrod said.

Bae has not made any indication that he intends to take action on the building, nor has he responded to the village’s actions, he added.

The First Midwest Bank did not immediately return a request for comment.