Iconic Wicker Park High Rise to Become Boutique Hotel

Plans to finally convert the iconic Wicker Park high-rise at Milwaukee, Damen and North avenues into a boutique hotel are back in motion, sources confirmed with DNAinfo Chicago Wednesday.

The 12-story art deco office building—more colloquially known as The Coyote Building—has long been in talks to receive a major redevelopment. Even earlier this year officials said the project at 1608 N. Milwaukee Ave. remained dormant.

But now Ald. Scott Waguespack’s (32nd) Chief of Staff Paul Sajovec is saying developers are in the preliminary stages of moving forward in the project, DNAinfo reports. It would call for an 80-to 90-room hotel with a restaurant on the first floor.

That’s combined with a banquet hall and meeting space in the warehouse at 1616 N. Milwaukee Ave.

The building was considered for a hotel conversion in 2011 by a joint venture involving the same developer that reopened Lincoln Park's Park View Hotel as Hotel Lincoln last year. In January, however, 1st Ward Ald. Proco Joe Moreno's office told Patch those plans fell through.

A November 2012 Crain's article reported that local investor Don Wilson and developer Newcastle Ltd. purchased the building from its previous owner, developer Krzysztof Karbowski, for $13.2 million, once again with plans to convert the building into a boutique hotel.

But now Sajovec says architect Ted Theodore, whose firm also redeveloped the iconic Bucktown Walgreens building on the same corner, will design the new hotel, he told reporter Alisa Hauser. 

"It's a type of building that isn't going to get built again. They want to respect historic character of the building and understand any aesthetic changes have to be kept to a bare minimum," Sajovec told DNAinfo.

Developers will need to work with community groups to organize a zoning change before construction.