Rooftop restaurant in Chicago’s Lake Point Tower for sale amid bankruptcy

A restaurant atop a Chicago skyscraper has landed back on the market.

Real estate investor and former first lady of New York State Evangeline Gouletas owns the Cité restaurant on the 70th floor of Lake Point Tower, Crain’s reported. A bankruptcy trustee hired a broker to sell the struggling eatery and end a long battle between Gouletas and her lenders.

The Gouletas venture that owns Cité owes almost $6.1 million to its creditors, including Republic Bank of Chicago, which filed to foreclose on the property in October 2019.

Hilco Real Estate has been hired to sell the circular rooftop space. The broker plans to market the property for restaurant operators, but is also willing to sell it to a buyer for residential use because it could be converted into a penthouse condominium.

While Gouletas has said she’s close to repaying her $3.6 million debt to Republic, bankruptcy trustee Robert Handler said he wasn’t aware of any deal between Gouletas and the bank.

Hilco is moving forward with plans to sell the 5,200-square-foot restaurant, as well as an additional 2,400 square feet of commercial space on the building’s second floor. It isn’t marketing the property with an asking price. A residential conversion could cost the buyer millions of dollars.

In the meantime, Cité is open and losing money. According to a recent court filing, the restaurant’s cash flow for March totaled a net loss of $61,075.

A decade ago, Gouletas faced a $5.7 million foreclosure on the property. She managed to keep the property by refinancing it with a $3.8 million loan from Republic in 2015.

Cité was formally evicted from the building by the Cook County Sheriff in November — just over two years after Republic filed the foreclosure. A few days after that, the Gouletas venture filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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