Motel Row on Lincoln Ave.... Ongoing Saga

I usually like to comment on these stories rather than cut and paste... but it's late and I spent half the day cleaning my new listing (never forget where you came from!). Anywho, I live near this area of motels... and have for a good part of my life wondered how they stuck around. See ya! They had about 10 positive years.

There are a few good links to the history of this stretch of Lincoln Ave... gotta find them. But the point here is, Lincoln Avenue, North of Foster, continues to be nuts with new construction development. It's a great place to live if you don't need the train and like the option of visiting Lincoln Square or the more surburban Lincolnwood... both within 5 minutes.


Another Lincoln Avenue motel faces demolition
(Crain’s) —

The Stars will fall in September.
Demolition on the Stars Motel, which evokes both nostalgia and nausea for proponents of redevelopment for the famed Motel Row along North Lincoln Avenue, has been scheduled for Sept. 1 to make way for Village Center, a five-story condo building.

Michael Schwartz and Scott Schiller, owners of S&S Home Builders LLC who are developing Village Center, said they have an Aug. 11 closing date scheduled for their purchase of the motel at 6100 N. Lincoln Ave. They’ll bring in the bulldozers shortly after taking possession.
“We certainly don’t intend to operate it as a motel,” Mr. Schwartz said. “We could never rehab the hotel into a condo.”

They’ve put the motel’s neon sign up on Ebay with a starting price of $500. There were no bidders as of Wednesday afternoon and the auction is scheduled to end Saturday night.
“The difficulty with the sign is that it is extremely large and difficult to move,” Mr. Schwartz said. “It is a cash and carry sale.”

The 54-room Stars Motel will be the fourth motel between Foster and Devon avenues to fall in recent years. More than a dozen motels used to dot that stretch of North Lincoln Avenue when the road served as the main artery between Chicago and Milwaukee, but now community and city officials would rather see the area gentrify.

“It’s been a disincentive for progress in our area to have them here,” said Mimi Acciari, executive director for the Lincoln Bend Chamber of Commerce. “We’re happy to see progress.”
Related story: A row on Motel Row

While the Riverside Motel, Spa Motel and Acres Motel were all taken by eminent domain, the Stars’ owners decided to put their property up for sale. Mr. Schwartz said he paid between $2 million and $3 million for the Stars Motel and has tried unsuccessfully to buy other motels along the strip.

Manu Patel, who has owned the Apache Motel at 5535 N. Lincoln Ave. for 19 years, said he is approached about once a month by someone offering to buy his property. He always turns them down. “This is a good business for us,” Mr. Patel said of running the motel. “There is nothing else I know how to do.”