New life (and name) for a suburban classic: Hotelier, village are reviving Indian Lakes Resort

Checking into the former Indian Lakes Resort was an experience all its own.

The six-story atrium lobby had waterfalls, rock formations and a honeycomb-like glass ceiling. Barrington architect Don Erickson - a student of Frank Lloyd Wright - chose a bold geometric design for the Bloomingdale resort, with hexagon-shaped hotel rooms tiered and stacked on each other.

When the hotel closed and went up for sale in 2021, many wondered if Indian Lakes would ever reopen.

But the shuttered hotel, once a staycation spot and source of local pride, is showing signs of new life. Chicago-based Maverick Hotels and Restaurants is renovating the complex and giving it a new name: Prairie Lakes Resort.

"We intend to celebrate its history with Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired architecture," Maverick CEO Robert Habeeb said. "We're trying to pay careful attention to Frank Lloyd Wright and his legacy and his connection to the resort."

On the golf side of the resort campus, Bloomingdale leaders and golf course architect Dave Esler are finalizing plans to overhaul the traditional 27-hole layout into a new 18-hole course, a nine-hole par-3 course with golf academy holes and a driving range separating the two.

The village bought the resort's dormant golf course to protect it from development in 2020.

"It's not just another golf course," Village President Franco Coladipietro said. "It's being developed to be a golf experience for a wide range of people."

The future of the hotel along Schick Road is a work in progress. Maverick intends to update and upgrade hotel amenities, refresh all the hotel rooms, reopen the spa and restaurants and re-establish the resort as a golf destination.

"The beautiful thing about that resort is that it's so versatile," Habeeb said. "We see the potential for business conferences and meetings. We see golf outings. It's a haven for weddings. We have a really inspired vision on establishing Prairie Lakes as a wedding mecca."

Crews have been removing carpeting from the lower level of the hotel and all meeting spaces, as well as old furniture and fixtures. Prairie Lakes will offer 241 guest rooms and about 60 suites.

To help fill some of those hotel rooms, village leaders are teaming with Maverick to bring the golf course back up to par. Maverick plans to pour about $30 million into the resort renovations, exclusive of its investment in the golf course. The company, whose portfolio includes the Sable, a 223-room hotel at Chicago's Navy Pier, also envisions a 10,000-square-foot addition for meetings and events at Prairie Lakes.

"I know that the resort has amazing attributes. It can be an amazing business," said Habeeb, who lives in Medinah. "Personally, it's right in my backyard. It's a business that I know and love. I really have a strong feeling that it's got potential. Its rebirth is going to bring that whole area back to life."

The resort's rise and fall

The hotel opened in the 1980s and turned Bloomingdale into a weekend resort town. Indian Lakes hosted countless golf outings, celebrity fundraisers headlined by Meryl Streep and The Go-Go's, and a '90s pop-culture convention featuring a cast reunion of "Beverly Hills 90210."

Most Chicagoans and suburbanites made the easy trip to Indian Lakes for a weekend escape, a day at the spa or an afternoon on the links.

But the 27-hole golf course ceased operations in late 2016 and, not long after, Indian Lakes lost its Hilton branding on the property.

Then there was an attempt to build hundreds of houses on the shuttered golf course - an idea that drew strong opposition from neighbors before it was scrapped in 2019. The village paid Indian Lakes more than $8 million for the course and 15 acres along the south side of Schick Road between Country Club and Cardinal drives.

The village will continue to own the golf course to "ensure in perpetuity" that it remains open space, Coladipietro said.

"We sell it to somebody else, well, maybe they put a golf course on it, and five years from now, they come back and say, 'Well, we can't operate as a golf course anymore. We want to put houses on it.' We're right back where we started," he said. "We don't want to put ourselves in that position."

The previous owners shut down the hotel in March 2021. Bloomingdale leaders had taken steps to revoke the hotel's business license after a fatal shooting left one person dead and five others injured during a party that February.

County records show the hotel property was sold for $5.25 million in December 2021 to 250 West LLC.

A fresh start

The golf course renovations will incorporate stormwater improvements for the Indian Lakes area.

"Time has been spent on not only coming up with the right design for the golf course, but also the stormwater management part that requires permitting from the Illinois EPA and other county agencies for us to move forward," Bloomingdale Village Administrator Pietro Scalera said.

Officials have not yet determined a cost estimate for the golf course redesign, but the hope is to start that work late this year or early 2024.

Coladipietro compared plans for the putting green to the "Dance Floor" at the Geneva National Resort on the shores of Lake Como, Wisconsin. It isn't so much a putting practice area but a venue for a date night or family get-together.

"This property is not just for someone who wants to go and golf," Coladipietro said.

Maverick is licensing the golf course property from the village, and any funds received will be earmarked to pay off the bonds used to purchase the land.

Coladipietro called Maverick's CEO and his team "leaders in their field." Before establishing Maverick, Habeeb spent more than two decades with First Hospitality Group, according to a company bio. First Hospitality began managing Indian Lakes in the early 2000s.

"Bob has a history with this property when he was part of First Hospitality," Coladipietro said. "So if there's anybody who understands Indian Lakes and the hotel and the property, it's Bob, and he would be the one to be able to breathe new life into it."

Maverick will be doing the resort renovation in phases. The main building could reopen in early 2024, Habeeb said.

Coming out of the pandemic, corporate business is "not 100%, but leisure business is back as strong as it was in 2019," he said. "And that's a very good signal, and we think that our timing will be good to capitalize on that."

The resort's former executive offices will become coworking spaces, "a piece of the business for the future." Maverick will revive The Cave, a kitschy bar that looks like it's carved from lava rock off the lobby. And the hotel will retain Erickson's overlapping hexagons.

Erickson studied under Wright at the architect's famed Taliesin studio in Wisconsin.

"He said that he designed the resort as he saw it through Frank Lloyd Wright's eyes," Habeeb said, "and we're going to really key off that and celebrate Frank Lloyd Wright's style of architecture and the resort's connection to it."

• Daily Herald staff writer Susan Sarkauskas contributed to this report