A real estate developer has bought the long-vacant former Motorola property in Harvard in hopes of repairing and leasing the giant white elephant, officials said.
Having been burned before over proposals to resurrect the property, Harvard Mayor Michael Kelly said he is “cautiously optimistic” the project will come to fruition.
Pinnacle Fund Management, an affiliate of CAI Investments LLC, of Las Vegas, bought the property this week for an undisclosed price from the U.S. Marshals Service, Kelly said.
To make the property meet municipal code requirements, the developers will have to renovate the building to replace the fire sprinkler and fire alarm systems and widespread mold, Kelly said.
When Motorola opened the $100 million plant in 1997 — in the rural hometown of co-founder Paul Galvin, at least an hour-and-a-half drive northwest of Chicago — it was the top cellphone maker in the world. The building employed 5,000 people and featured deluxe offices, an auditorium, and two heliports. But as mobile phones shifted from analog to digital, and competitors transferred production to China, the company’s sales declined dramatically. The plant closed in 2003.
Various owners have had control since then. One company, Optima International, was linked to a Ukrainian oligarch, who let it fall into disrepair, before the FBI accused him of money laundering. Chinese businessman Xiao Hua “Edward” Gong bought the property for $9 million in 2016, but he was charged in Canada with fraud, and the building remained unused.
Canadian prosecutors put a freeze on the property. This year, a data center company, Green Data Center Real Estate Inc., put up nearly $1 million in escrow money toward buying the site, Kelly said, but its bid fell through. About $500,000 of the escrow was applied to the building’s back taxes, he said.
The new owner, Pinnacle, will explore using solar power on the site, Kelly said. It also bid on Harvard’s former police station for potential use as a boutique hotel, which will be considered with two competing bids.
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October 02, 2021 at 05:50AM
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Former Motorola site in Harvard sold to a developer - Chicago Tribune
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