Column: With razing, Ramada site opens door for new life

Chicago Tribune

16-07-2025

The much-maligned former Ramada Inn is gone, the space now a forlorn, empty lot, home only to an oversized backhoe. It took long enough for the troublesome Waukegan property to be razed to the ground.
The last thing standing from the edifice is the sign for Stretch's Bar & Grill, the final occupant of the once-grand hotel. Getting rid of the vacant hospitality complex comprised of five buildings was a tough call for city officials under two mayoral administrations.
During Mayor Sam Cunningham's first term in office, the owners of the property were threatened in 2019 with the demolition of the buildings. The mayor, elected to a second term in April after being out of office for four years, has seen that action come to fruition, even though he lobbied owners in 2019 to fix up the property and keep it as a functioning hotel.
Making it something worthy of its location may also be challenging. Yet, Waukeganites can agree that anything is better on the five-acre site than a charming six-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounding the boarded-up hotel at 200 N. Green Bay Road, near Brookside Avenue.
The eyesore had been an empty blemish, abandoned by the hotel operator in 2018 with all furnishings left behind, including everything guests would need, such as beds. The empty hotel became a favorite home for inventive squatters seeking shelter as electricity and water were still available. City police shagged or arrested nearly 50 individuals over the years, including eight who had outstanding warrants, in the time it took to wreck the building.
There were two killings of apparent drifters in 2023. Graffiti adorned boarded-up windows. Adding to the decaying site were two fires, believed to be intentionally set. Another calamity was burst pipes, adding to the hotel's distress. The complex was red-tagged repeatedly by city inspectors.
Which was too bad. If location, location, location is the mantra of the real estate industry, the former Ramada site is a top-shelf realty spot. Busy Green Bay Road is a booming sector in that part of Waukegan.
The old hotel was neighbors with busy auto dealers and mini-malls, along with nearby apartments. Folks by it must be gleeful to see the two-story scar come down, memories of the tarnished site hauled away with tons of debris from the bulldozed site.
Once, the Ramada was a prime spot for visitors, its dining room a destination in the 1970s and '80s for families, especially its Sunday brunch, which shamed many spreads in close-in North Shore communities. Parents of sailors graduating from 'boot' camp at Naval Station Great Lakes used the hotel as their base when viewing the naval pomp of summer graduation ceremonies held on Ross Field.
The Ramada more than rivaled Waukegan's other hotels located downtown, which were heading for hosting their last guests. Their names remain for many, even though over the years few of the buildings stand and those that do have been turned into housing.
The Clayton, The Waukegan, The Karcher, The Plaza and The Travel Lodge all attracted visitors, with businessmen and sales reps calling on the legacy industries which dotted the city's lakefront and provided local jobs for thousands. It was a golden age for Waukegan's once-flourishing hospitality industry.
With the boarded-up buildings on the city's near-West Side leveled, the future is wide open for what can replace the rundown hotel. The site has new life after decades of first being a fancy hotel and then a blight.
Currently, it remains in limbo over what will happen moving forward, but the Ramada headache is over for city officials and residents. An extension of one of the car dealers' properties could happen.
Certainly, the location can be repurposed into something useful and better looking. It's doubtful another hospitality chain would take a chance and build another hotel/motel.
Before its demise, proposals over the years included transforming the site into apartments or senior-citizen housing. Those sound like good starts to kick off planning for what comes next.
Developers and city planners have an empty canvas to work with as the scar thousands of motorists journeying along Green Bay Road have seen daily no longer exists. An empty lot surely is better than a deteriorated hulk.