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Rosemont buying corner property at gateway to town, plans to level former diner, sports bar

Rosemont is buying a dilapidated corner property at the edge of O'Hare International Airport and the village's western gateway to town.

The village is paying $1,675,000 for the building on the northwest corner of Mannheim and Higgins roads, which once was home to Shoeless Joe's sports bar, the neighboring Pine Grove diner, and Enigma The Lounge basement nightclub.

The village's purchase from owner Kunal Dave comes about a year after the municipality authorized condemnation proceedings for the building at 10290 W. Higgins Road. But ensuing negotiations led to agreement on a sale price.

"He wanted out. He couldn't get the deals he said he had," Mayor Brad Stephens said of Dave's prospects for everything from a Twin Peaks sports bar to a gas station at the site.

The sale includes everything but the Best Western at O'Hare motel, which is connected via a hallway and owned by a North Carolina hotel group that once included Dave.

The village plans to break off and demolish the portion of the building it will own, but officials must first clean up a complex series of cross parking easements so that the motel and former diner/bar building are on their own.

Stephens hasn't said what type of redevelopment he's eying at the prominent corner. Behind the property, renovations continue on the shuttered 9-story, 274-room Edward Hotel, and across the Jane Addams Tollway, work is nearly complete on a La Quinta Inns & Suites in a portion of the former Wyndham O'Hare hotel.

In between those two hotel sites is a long-vacant 19-acre property once home to a par 3 golf course.

"It's the prime corner in Rosemont coming from the west end," Stephens said.

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