Our angle on the indictment of three Sunrise Equities principals naturally focused on the Pure building at 24 S Morgan St in the West Loop, simply because the building actually exists — we followed it from pre-construction through completion, and were in regular contact with the building’s marketing team up until the point when its developers disappeared.
But as the U.S. Attorney’s Office notes, Pure was just one of three projects Sunrise was promoting as investment opportunities. Pure2o was pitched as an 18-story, 162 unit tower at 4700 N Clarendon Ave in Uptown. Preliminary prices started in the $220s, with penthouses starting in the $650s. Sunrise went so far as to post a sign on-site in February 2008 promoting “the evolution of urban living.” There’s been a lot of talk about how Sunrise pitched its developments to Muslim investors, but in March 2008 we learned that Castleroc Estates was promoting the project to Irish investors.
The other project is one whose promotion predates my time at Yo — in fact, we only wrote about it once, way back in December 2006. 2215 Madison, designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture, would have comprised 52 one- and two-bedroom condos, plus ground-floor retail space fronting Madison Street. Approximately 30 percent of the building was under contract at that time.
The city’s seen a couple of real gem developers. These guys and, of course, Andrius, the Motor Row dude. What puzzles me is that banks apparently lent money without a whole lot of due diligence. A little bit of online research, even back then, would have provided some interesting history into some of these folks’ backgrounds. With regard to the individual investors who thought they were going to earn 15-30% ROI, what were they thinking? Maybe I’m a crusty, middle aged skeptic, but come on.
dave,
Banks have always been stupid and gullible when times are good. Developers rely on that.
A big part of the problem is that their experienced lenders get wiped out in times like this (a friend who fits that description has all 3 of his personal homes in foreclosure) and they’re relying on naive MBA-credentialed kids in boom times.
I could see that Augunas / Rokas International was a fraud on the face of his Web site. People who’ve actually done deals in multiple countries can list them. There was no trace of specificity on his site.