Not long after Chicago’s first casino opened in the Medinah Temple building, the owner of the city landmark has landed a loan for the property during a tight lending market.
Friedman Properties last month took out a $12 million loan from Wintrust Bank on the 111-year-old Moorish Revival structure at 600 N. Wabash Ave. The loan matures in November 2026, according to Cook County property records.
The Chicago-based real estate investor, led by Al Friedman, secured the loan about a month after Bally’s opened the city’s first casino in the four-story building.
The loan to Friedman, a firm whose leader is known as the “mayor of River North” because of his extensive investments in the area, stands out after more than a year of interest-rate increases that have slowed the pace of property sales and financing deals throughout the country.
Bally’s plans to lease the River North building from Friedman as a temporary casino until 2026, when it plans to open a larger, new complex along the Chicago River about a mile west of the Medinah Temple.
Providence, Rhode Island-based Bally’s $1.7 billion vision for the Freedom Center site emerged as the city’s preferred plan last year under previous Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and Bally’s is expected to begin redeveloping the 30-acre site in the summer.
Bally’s took control of the site, now used as a Chicago Tribune printing facility, about a year ago in a $500 million sale-leaseback deal with Oak Street Real Estate Capital.
To use the Medinah Temple in the meantime, Bally’s has agreed to pay more than $16.5 million in rent, plus a management fee of $330,000, under terms of its four-year lease with Friedman, the Chicago Sun-Times first reported in September. Bally’s also must pay property taxes that in the past have topped $1.1 million per year.
If Bally’s were to extend the lease another two years, it would own another $9.6 million in rent and management fees, the newspaper reported.
Friedman declined to comment on the loan and Wintrust also declined to comment to CoStar News.
Friedman has a long history with the building known for its distinctive onion domes.
Many Chicagoans remember the Medinah Temple as the longtime home to the Shrine Circus. Since that time, the building has narrowly escaped the wrecking ball to become a Chicago landmark and a 135,000-square-foot home furnishings store.
The building was designed by architecture firm Huehl & Schmid, and it opened in 1912 for the Shriners. A 30,000-pound pipe organ was added in 1915, and the building’s 4,200-seat auditorium was long used for the circus and other large gatherings just steps from the Magnificent Mile shopping district.
By 2001, though, the building was facing demolition when the city agreed to provide more than $12 million in incentives to Friedman to back the firm’s $60 million redevelopment of the entire block bounded by Wabash, Ontario, Ohio and State streets.
The Medinah Temple became a city landmark in 2001, and Bloomingdale’s opened a home furnishings store there in 2003. Friedman kept ownership of the land beneath the store before the developer eventually bought the building from Bloomingdale’s parent Macy’s for $24.25 million in June 2019.
That was less than a year before the onset of COVID-19. A planned retail, food and entertainment pop-up in the building never came to fruition, and Friedman continued seeking retail tenants before landing the casino deal.
For the Record
The loan was led by Wintrust’s Nick Cannon and Reece Kamins.