After a series of development plot twists and big legal tension, a Fulton Market hotel backed by Robert De Niro is ready for its dramatic climax: opening amid a pandemic.
While many downtown hotels reel from the COVID-19 crisis and some temporarily shuttered ones face the possibility of never reopening, the Nobu Hotel Chicago will make its long-delayed debut July 1, the property's managers announced.
The bold move will cap off more than four years of development issues for the 12-story building at 846-854 W. Randolph St. with the challenge of drawing in guests while business and leisure travel have been all but sapped by the outbreak.
But after an ownership change, a lawsuit against a contractor and recent riots and looting that shut down work, leadership at the 115-room luxury hotel is counting on the story having a happy ending.
"We're not making any money closed," said Michael Chin, the hotel's general manager and regional director at Nobu Hospitality, the brand backed by De Niro and California chef Nobu Matsuhisa. "We want to be a part of turning the corner from pandemic to safe practicing and the new normal of how people are gonna travel and how people are gonna resume somewhat of a new style of being able to live life."
Not that Chin didn't have concerns about opening the doors before the fall, even as recently as a few weeks ago.
Hotel occupancy in the central business district had been below 20 percent for months. Some of the hotel's furniture vendors had shut down manufacturing plants. Plus, Chin had an entirely new staff to train on safety protocols with little visibility into what guests will expect. And civil unrest marring downtown threatened to keep people away from city hotels for a while.
"It was this perfect storm of everything that could go wrong, did go wrong," he said. "I wanted to take bushels of sage and just burn it around the building."
But Illinois' impending move to the next phase of Gov. J.B. Pritzker's reopening plan has started to generate some leisure travel demand, which made it the right time to open the doors and start marketing the Nobu, Chin said. Even if that meant setting aside its initial plan to cater to corporate business from Fulton Market companies like Google and McDonald's.
Some of the hotel's amenities also won't be open to start, including the pool and signature Nobu restaurant and bar. Chin is focused on making sure guests and hotel staff feel comfortable with the basics of food service and cleaning rooms before taking next steps.
For now, "we want to cater to the guest coming from the suburbs that has been stuck in their house and just wanted a break in the routine," he said. "They can stay in a hotel and walk around the city instead of being stuck in their backyard."
Chin said room rates at the Nobu start at $299, a level it hopes to maintain despite lower demand to sustain the "integrity" of the luxury brand.
The Nobu's ribbon-cutting was originally supposed to be in late 2017 after its original developer, M Development, held a groundbreaking ceremony in June 2016 with De Niro and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel on hand. But M Development, owned by developer Mark Hunt, didn't begin work on the foundation until spring 2017.
Six months later, Chicago-based contractor Centaur Construction stopped work on the project as M development scrambled to finalize a $52.5 million construction loan for the nearly $73 million project. That halted progress until Hunt's venture sold the property in January 2018 for $15.2 million to a venture of luxury hotel owner and operator RCD Resorts, according to Cook County property records.
RCD aimed to open the Nobu last year, but pushed that back after its own legal spat with Centaur. RCD sued the contractor in September, alleging its executives embezzled money for the project and failed to finish the job despite being paid for the work. That case is pending in federal court.
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