FHG Changes Historic Buildings Into Hotels

CHICAGO- Robert Habeeb looks carefully at aging office buildings when he walks through a downtown. In the past ten years, as the president of the Rosemont-based First Hospitality Group, a development and management firm, he has helped transform several under-appreciated properties, whether from the dawn of the skyscraper era or the pre-war fad for Art Deco, into hotels and says this niche now plays a vital role in the revival of the Midwestern region’s downtowns.

“These are stately buildings and you can’t replicate them today,” he says. A century ago, downtown buildings were more important to a city’s identity, and architects were expected to design them with a flourish. “It’s rare to find a building that doesn’t measure up in terms of aesthetics.”