Save Hotel Baker |
|
|
This blog is regarding the plight of the spectacular and historic Hotel Baker in Saint Charles, IL that is in serious trouble because the owners went bankrupt.  St. Charles Public Library - Hotel Baker History E-mail me **!! Sealed Auction Information site - bids due July 22nd 2003 !!** City of St. Charles website City of Geneva website Hotel Baker iPix Tours AIA Chicago 1998 design awards page AIA Chicago 2000 design awards page *PING* Archives 
Other weBlogs by Daniel Stafford: The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal *Spell Book* Affirmation Station Remembering Mom Save Hotel Baker Uncle Harold's Farm |
Saturday, December 14, 2002
Back to the performances idea - what would be really nice would be to have a small number of tickets given away on local radio stations. Those tickets would include a room for the night, so when I mean small number, I mean maybe ten. That would make them very rare and special. The remainder would be sold at a special "Performance Night" rate to help build a trust fund to keep the Baker both operating and in good repair. The Baker only has 55 rooms, and it would need a few for the celebrity and their people, I would guess perhaps six to ten rooms. That would leave 35 rooms to let for Performance Night, perhaps. An interesting thought, at the least. One of the things I would really like to see happen at the Baker would be to have a celebrity a month do a small show from the Rainbow Room, an intimate gathering featuring musicians and comedians. A sort of revival of "Live, From The Rainbow Room". It would be extremely nice to be able to do a series of broadcasts of such events. With today's high speed internet you can actually feed video real time if you have enough bandwidth. Another interesting thing from the history page at the library - the Baker was powered by a hydro-power dam on the Fox river from the day it was built, so it was not susceptible to power outages when the commercial power grid went out. That is a rather unique feature in any hotel. Also, many national level political meetings were held at the Baker. They include J.F.K. and Mayor Richard Daley just to note a couple of the more prominent politicians. The Baker was also nick named "The Honeymoon Hotel" for it's romantic nuptial getaways. Please note the new link to the left for the ST. Charles Public Library's history page on the Baker. There is also a page linked off there outlining bibliographic sources for further research. I have several ideas for things I'd like to see happen at the Baker when it's in operation again, I will post them here a bit later. Now, I could swear that I read on the old hotelbaker.com website that Andersen held ownership of the hotel, but this new article either contradicts or compounds that information. Here's the general idea: Two gentlemen named Craig Frank and Neil Johnson secured a loan from LaSalle bank to buy and rehab the Baker. Craig Frank's mother, Ruby Frank, apparently co-signed or guaranteed the loan. Now LaSalle Bank has filed a suit against Ruby Frank to collect the remainder of the loan amount after they auctioned off the hotel to themselves for less than the amount due. It's still speculative whether Ruby Frank will follow her son and his partner into bankruptcy or pay the amount. LaSalle Bank apparently intends to pursue the suit regardless of whether they sell the Baker for more than the amount of the loan or not. The article mentions Elizabeth Bates as Ruby Frank's attourney. Apparently Mz.Bates argued before the judge that 1. The bank shouldn't be able to sue Ruby Frank if they get more from the sale of the hotel than was due, and 2. That the bank should be forced to hold another auction for both the property AND it's contents in the same auction. Judge MIchael Colwell has apparently ruled against both arguments. This article was posted to the Daily Herald on Thursday, 12/12/2002. (Daily Herald) Just found a more recent story in the Herald. I was under the impression that Andersen Accounting owned the Baker. That may be in error. I'll post the gist of the article shortly. Upon consideration of the article from the Daily Herald, it was pretty silly of me to make such an offer of free web space for the Baker to the Mayor's Office in Saint Charles. It's not like there is some poor broke entity trying to save the hotel. The folks who would have wanted to do that already lost the battle. The question is how to enlist support for aquiring the hotel and getting it back in operation. I have to wonder; is there anyone who would like to try working with the bank buy the hotel considering how much the bank may want. I must assume they are looking for in excess of $4-5 million considering their methodology in the auctions. I could really use the help of individuals with experience in the following areas: Organization of non-profit corporations. Legal affairs. Fund raising. Historic site management. Hoteliers. Marketing / promotion Web site design I am really a novice in all these areas, I just have a vision of the Baker as something very special that should be preserved and operated for posterity. I do not see this as a matter of money or fortune. Without the help of individuals with experience in the areas above, I am not likely to get very far. This is a realistic view. However, I will not give up until I have to. Whatever I can do I will in whatever spare time I can scrape together. Keeping in mind I am married and working a more than full-time job with two hours a day of commute time. If it weren't for the internet...well, you all know. Friday, December 13, 2002
I've been STARTING to read the bulletin from the National Register of Historic Places (NHL) from their website linked below. The bulletin covers how to evaluate and prepare a nomination of a site for status as a National Historic Landmark. It is extensive and quite stringent, but so far I suspect there may be merit to making such a case. An alternative would be inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, which has less stringent requirements. I would suspect this may have been done in the past, as the Baker was listed as a member of the National Association of Historic Hotels previously. Membership of the NHH is administered through the same federal agency. Another interesting Kane County office to contact may be the Historic Preservation Commission at 630-232-3480. They do not have a separate page of their own on the Kane County web site as yet. I also do not know hours. They look to be a sub-department of the Kane County Developement Commission. Well, I just found an article in the archives from the Daily Herald. It's not pretty. The article is dated October 26, 2002 www.dailyherald.com and costs $2.50 to purchase because it's over seven days old. The gist: The Baker was driven to forclosure by LaSalle bank, which was owed approximately $3.5 Million. It went to auction the Friday prior to the article and the only bidder was the Lasalle bank. It seems the bank refused to sell and fixtures or furnishings as part of the auction, they were only auctioning the building and the land. There was one other interested party, but he was quoted as stating that the refusal to auction the buiilding's contents with the building soured him on the whole deal. There was to be a separate auction of the contents the following Wednesday. The bank got the Hotel Baker for $3 Million. No furthwer word on the fate of the hotel so far. I did not see another article regarding the second auction in the Herald archives. I would wonder if the bank has been attempting to sell the Baker themselves or plans to attempt to operate it. I would guess that the next step in aquiring information would be to contact the Kane County, IL Register of Deeds office and see who holds title. The auction mentioned in the article is noted in the same article as being held at the Kane County courthouse. There are some individuals listed in the article that it may be worthwhile attempting to contact with inquiries as well. St. Charles Mayor Sue Klinkhamer Rosemary Mackey, Marketing Manager for Downtown St. Charles Partnership Pat O'Rahilly, independent entrepreneur. St. Charles City Attourney Tim O'Neil And of course, officials of the Lasalle Bank. I used a handy tool, "addme.com" to submit to about ten search engines. About ten of the fifteen submission links were working, which is good considering how often the search engines must change and update their pages. Allright, I've added meta tags to this blog, submitted to several weBlog directories, now for the REAL fun. Search engine submissions. Not a peep from the Saint Charles Mayor's Office. So far. Of course, they might get a lot of e-mail... No idea yet if the Hotel Baker qualifies, but I suspect it might be possible to submit a nomination for National Historic Landmark status. Here's the NHL website. Looks like there is a lot of reading there. Thursday, December 12, 2002
I'm kind of curious of the feasibility and value of forming a Non-profit corporation to aquire and operate the Baker as a Hotel / Museum combination. Any suggestions or comments along those lines would be welcome. Also, please note in any responses or e-mails whether you would like your correspondence posted to this blog. My preference would be to note as much correspondence as I can here in the blog so no details are left out. Getting these pages up and running in under two hours was a challenge, but I will be adding links here and there over the next few days. Stay tuned and thank you for visiting. First, I found out last night that the hotel's website, www.hotelbaker.com is down and the domain for sale. I've known they've been in trouble since 05/2002. This hotel was most recently owned by Andersen Accounting of the Enron scandals to the best of my knowledge and that is the source of this issue as I understand it. Keep in mind that I do not have a greatly detailed knowledge of the situation at this point. You can learn more about the Hotel Baker by going to my Hotel Baker web page at: Hotel Baker I just e-mailed the Mayor's Office at the City of Saint Charles, IL where the hotel is located offering to volunteer up to 100mb of space on whizzyrds.com to host a temporary site for the hotel to maintain a web presence during these difficulties. That was only about an hour ago, I will post what I get back on that daily. People, this hotel is absolutely beautiful, fully rennovated in '97, built in the 1920's, and used to host musical radio performances with the likes of Lawrence Welk, Louis Armstrong, and others in the 30's and 40's. See the web page above. |
  |