Former Jewelers Building Sells For More Than $7 Million, Will Become Hotel

Chicago (CBS) - The 136 year old historic Jewelers Building in the Chicago Loop will soon become a boutique hotel. The building is listed as a historic landmark and sold this month for $7.2 million. The building located at 19 S. Wabash Avenue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the only example of early work from Chicago architecture firm Adler & Sullivan remaining in the Loop.

An unknown hotel chain based in San Francisco will be going into the building. According to Daniel Knorps, Principal of KM Real Estate Capital who brokered the deal, the hotel chain signed a ten-year lease for 24,000 square feet of the building and plans to build rooms with kitchenettes.

Knorps says construction is expected to start by late summer with the hotel expected to open in 2020. He stated that developers will be handling the building with care in order to preserve the building as much as possible. New soundproof windows will be put in to counter the noise of the "L" lines outside the building.

The venture of Peerless Development and Honoree Properties bought the 40,000 square foot building at the address.

"The architecture is just incredible," says Knorps. "There's nothing designed like it anymore. You're not just seeing one of those huge skyscrapers going up; we're restoring a historic building."

According to Cook County public records, the building was previously owned by Nicholas Yassan of Rany Management who bought the building in March 2016 for $4.5 million. The building was built in 1882 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, as well as listed as a Chicago landmark in 1981.