Chicago Cheat Sheet: 7 years on, Toyoko Inn Hotel project languishing…& more

Planned hotel in West Loop still languishing
The long-delayed Toyoko Inn Hotel in the West Loop is no closer to becoming a reality more than a year after initial construction work began on the project. The proposed 615-room hotel at 320 South Clinton Street last year ran afoul of Alderman Brendan Reilly, who called the design “God awful.” Crews did do initial foundation work in spring 2018, but nothing has happened since. Reilly now says he plans to find out why there’s been no progress. [Curbed]

Longtime Bear sheds Lake Forest home
Former longtime Chicago Bear Olin Kreutz sold a five-bedroom home in Lake Forest after buying a Bannockburn mansion from former Bull Kirk Hinrich. Kreutz, who played for the Bears from 1998 to 2010, bought the 4,400-square-foot house in 2002 for $1.3 million. He sold it last week for less than $1.2 million. He paid $2.4 million last year to buy the nine-bedroom, 9,300-square-foot mansion from Hinrich. [Chicago Tribune]

Apartments set to rise at Arlington Downs complex in Arlington Heights
Work is poised to begin on the next phase of Springbank Real Estate Group’s $320 million Arlington Downs mixed-use development in Arlington Heights. A five-story, 263-unit apartment building on Euclid Avenue west of Arlington International Racecourse is awaiting final village approval. The project is expected to take 20 months to finish. The entire Arlington Downs complex could take five years to finish and would include a four-story hotel, 40,000 square feet of retail and hundreds more residences. [Daily Herald]

Related readying new public park at One Bennett Park
Related Midwest is expected to open the new public park it’s building as part of its One Bennett Park complex in Streeterville this summer. Bennett Park is being designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which also designed Maggie Daley Park, The 606 trail and the planned Obama Presidential Center. The park will feature two dog parks, a shaded grove and a children’s play area with a sandbox, slides, play huts, a timber climbing forest and more. Related opened the apartment portion of One Bennett Park last year and started delivering condos in the for-sale portion of the building this year. [Curbed]

Site of failed Evanston office project drawing interest
Several buyers are interested a city-owned parking lot in Evanston for possible redevelopment, officials said. The lot at 1714-20 Chicago Avenue is next to the Evanston Public Library previously had been eyed for an 11-story office development. The project, however, failed to win aldermanic approval, and the purchase contract later expired. [Evanston Review]