Embattled developer Marty Paris recently signed his second deed-in-lieu of foreclosure for a multifamily building in the past few months.
Lender Republic Bank of Chicago filed a foreclosure complaint against Paris last summer, claiming he defaulted on a $12 million loan backed by a group of 26 condos at 1464 Michigan Avenue. Paris eventually handed back the keys to the lender last month via deed-in-lieu of foreclosure agreement, public records show.
The condos are located within a 25-story, 210-unit South Loop building known as The Marquee.
Paris’s firm, Sedgwick Properties, allegedly missed making property tax payments due for 2022 and 2023, the lawsuit said. Republic put up more than $636,000 to satisfy the tax obligations at the property, which constitutes a default by the landlord, the foreclosure complaint stated.
Around the same time that Republic filed its complaint against Paris regarding the South Loop condos, the bank also filed a separate foreclosure complaint against his firm regarding a loan backed by an apartment building at 146 West Erie Street.
The bank claimed at the time that Paris had fallen behind on payments toward a $36 million loan backed by the 14-story, 31-unit River North building known as The Rhone. In April, Paris gave that building back to the bank via a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure agreement as well.
Paris and Republic did not respond to requests for comment.
Before Paris gave up the Rhone, the building had faced its fair share of troubles.
Paris’ Sedgwick Development started the project as a condo tower in 2017.
It encountered several delays and restarted in 2021 using its address as a name. It also was trimmed from 15 stories to 14, losing its amenity floor. Paris blamed the city’s lethargic condo market, worsened by the pandemic and civil unrest downtown, for the project’s long timeline.
The Rhone (its fourth name since the development launched) was ultimately marketed as rentals seeking an average of $10,000 a month.
Mechanic’s liens fights flared up in 2021 with contractors alleging nonpayment for work totaling over $1 million.
The two foreclosures come on the heels of other personal and professional troubles.
Volatile divorce proceedings landed him in Cook County jail three times, mainly for disputing court orders to pay his ex-wife’s lawyers. Although his divorce has been finalized, he sued his lawyers in the proceedings earlier this year, alleging they abandoned him on the eve of his trial and later conspired to collect fees that helped land him in jail.
As a result of his ongoing financial troubles, he filed for personal bankruptcy and on behalf of one of his subsidiaries.
One of those bankruptcy filings triggered a personal guarantee clause in a $26 million loan backed by an apartment building at 301 West North Avenue that Paris had defaulted on. The bankruptcy and the foreclosure complaint related to 301 West North Avenue are still pending.
In suburban River Forest, a separate legal battle is playing out over an unused development site where Paris’s firm proposed building a condo development in 2016 but has yet to deliver it.
A tangle of mechanics liens, and complaints from a lender and the village of River Forest is still working its way through Cook County court.