Garden Hotel cleanup continues as court cases over property grind on

SOUTH BELOIT — An Indiana company continues to grind away — literally — in the cleanup of the former Garden Hotel site on the corner of Gardner Street and Highway 51.

The court fights over the property grind on as well.

New Chapter Group remains the owner of record of what used to be home to a 161-room hotel complex. New Chapter Group appealed both years worth of property fines as well as last year’s order by a Winnebago County, Illinois judge allowing the dilapidated buildings to be razed.

South Beloit City Attorney Roxanne Sosnowski said oral arguments in the Illinois Fourth District Appellate Court regarding the property are scheduled for April 2 in Springfield.

New Chapter Group owes more than $8.8 million in fines that were levied over several years as the building fell further into disrepair. Sosnowski said as soon as the cleanup on the site is complete, the city will file another lien on the property seeking reimbursement for the demolition costs.

The original contract with Green Demolition of La Porte, Ind., called for the building to come down at a cost of $1.35 million. The asbestos removal on the site was extensive and a change order was approved for an additional $161,480. Because of the asbestos, Green Demolition has until the end of April to complete the cleanup.

All told, when finished, New Chapter Group is expected to owe more than $10 million for all the costs associated with the property.

Sosnowksi said she anticipates a final appellate court ruling by the end of May.

The city also has a July 16 court date in Winnebago County on the foreclosure case it first filed on the property in 2020.

Sosnowski said to her knowledge no development groups have reached out to the city about the property, but she said until the appeal and foreclosure cases are completed it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“If South Beloit did get a call about the property, we’d have to refer them to New Chapter Group,” Sosnowski said.

The hotel at 200 Dearborn Ave. opened as a Holiday Inn in 1964. The hotel closed in 2007 briefly before reopening as a Ramada Inn. It closed again in 2009 but was opened in 2010 as the South Beloit Hotel.

In 2014, the Ariva Hospitality Group, which later would become the New Chapter Group, bought the property and opened it as the Garden Hotel. The Garden Hotel closed in March of 2019 and never reopened. The Winnebago County Health Department condemned the property in September 2019.