Chicago Spire Disagreement Turns Into a Lawsuit
Apparently, Shelbourne, the developer of the Chicago Spire, and the disgruntled next door neighbors, the River View Condominium Association, couldn’t reach an agreement on an underground easement.
Off to the courts they go!
According to Crain’s, the Condo Association filed suit in Cook County Court asking, not for money damages, but a court order nullifying the easement. As a refresher, this is what the dispute is about:
The complaint alleges that officials with Garrett Kelleher’s Shelbourne Development Group Inc. and the company’s outside attorney, Thomas J. Murphy, falsely claimed they wanted the agreement only to run utilities lines under the property when they planned to construct a below-ground parking garage that would go down seven stories.
Mr. Murphy, who is not named as a defendant in the case, allegedly waited until after the condo association had signed the agreement, called an easement, before providing detailed plans that revealed the full scope of the project.
Without the easement, how will Shelbourne build the 7 story parking garage? Whoops!
This is not good news for Shelbourne, which is running full page ads in the Chicago Tribune and other publications in anticipation of the sales center opening in January. A delay in construction could really hurt sales.
But basically, for the River View Condo owners, it stinks to be them. Crain’s reports that the lawsuit alleges that Shelbourne’s engineering experts admit that the townhomes will sink 2 inches and suffer substantial foundation cracking.
Let the lawyering begin!
Sabrina, Check out the new website for the Chicago Spire: http://www.thechicagospire.com/.
Suprise, Suprise no Trump Tower in the shot panning the City Skyline. Obviously I wouldn’t include it either nor expected it to be in any marketing material. It’s a pretty amazing video of what its going to look like though…
I went for a presentation at the Ritz Carlton Chicago Residences(ONLY 5 of these in the World) and they said they spent over a Million Dollars on the video similar to this Spire one but was 180 seconds long. The video is not up but the music to the website is in the video presentation. Out of 38 Units on MLS right now 25 Pending. 86 Units total. This will be in 5 most exclusive residences in all of Chicago.
Pending 1400 Square Foot 1 Bedroom start at $1,279,938- 1,334,738
Active 1400 Square Foot 1 Bedroom already up to $1,970,450
Pending 1470 Square Foot 1 Bed plus Den start at $1,415,850-$2,035,035
Active 1470 Square Foot 1 Bed plus Den alread up to $2,046,151
Two 2 Bedrooms pending 2615-2812 Square foot start at $2,856,125- $2,997,600
Go to http://www.theresidenceschicago.com/home.html
This building is a classic Art Deco with so much character.
I bet they have a longer version of this at the Spire Sales center and assumed it cost just as much.
The Ritz is having some sales problems. They were supposed to be further along in construction by now but are still only 40% sold. The Hanig shoe store in the bottom of the original building had a “moving” sale a month or two back and was slated to move north to the John Hancock building but lo and behold, they are still there with a full stock of shoes and no signs saying they are moving anywhere.
It leads me to believe, that it could be quite a long wait for the Ritz.