Former Tremont Hotel Sells for $13M After Shelter Stint

A long-troubled boutique hotel just off the Magnificent Mile changed hands recently, marking a reset for the property that in recent years cycled from foreclosure to homeless shelter.

An affiliate of Elk Grove Village-based Avasa Hospitality bought the 15-story, 122-room hotel at 100 East Chestnut Street earlier this month for just over $13 million, according to Cook County property records. The building, long known as the Tremont Hotel, last traded after being swept up in a foreclosure and briefly repurposed by the city during Chicago’s migrant crisis, CoStar reported.

The sale comes as signs of life return to the Magnificent Mile, the city’s marquee retail strip along Michigan Avenue that struggled with vacancies and muted leasing since the pandemic. Hotel investors are starting to show up again, and late last year, Vinayaka Hospitality paid $72 million for the 752-room Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago at 909 North Michigan Avenue, one of the corridor’s biggest recent lodging trades.

The Chestnut Street property has had a turbulent few years. It housed Mike Ditka’s longtime namesake restaurant, a neighborhood fixture that closed in early 2020 after more than two decades, shortly after the hotel — then operating under the Selina brand — shut down as a result of the pandemic, according to the outlet.

Indianapolis-based Hotel Capital owned the vacant property when it was hit with a $25 million foreclosure lawsuit in 2023 by a lender affiliated with LaSalle Investment Management. After the legal process played out, the city leased the building in 2023 and 2024 as a temporary homeless shelter to help absorb an influx of migrants and a shortage of beds for unhoused residents. The shelter closed in September 2024.

LaSalle Investment Management seized the property through a judicial sale last fall and sold it to Avasa. The $13.2 million acquisition was financed with a $10 million loan from Millennium Bank, records show. Paramount Lodging Advisors’ Sanjeev Misra represented the seller.

Avasa Hospitality, based in Elk Grove Village, has five suburban Chicago hotels in its portfolio as well as experience in hotel design and management, according to their website. The firm has not said what it plans to do with the Tremont or when it might reopen.

— Eric Weilbacher