But by his own admission, Rick Lawrence doesn’t expect to be involved for the long term in the project to renovate the century-old Ferguson, Booth and Bateman-Kennedy buildings at the high-profile southwest corner of the block.
“I have been actively trying to do anything I can to get things back on the straight and narrow,” said Lawrence, 70, a Springfield resident who is president of the construction company Siciliano Inc.
Another company operated by Lawrence, Bright New Day Investments LLC, received a building permit in November for $50,000 in safety-related improvements at the eight-story Ferguson Building, 524 E. Monroe.
Lawrence is preparing the vacant building so that a future tenant, a restaurant operated by Corey Dickerson and Smarjesse Taylor, Aunt Lou’s Soul Food, can open on the first floor sometime in the first quarter of 2023.
Lawrence still holds title to the Ferguson, Booth and Bateman-Kennedy buildings, which are next to each other, but he doesn’t expect to be the developer to carry the project through completion.
As proposed, the project would create seven floors of loft-style apartments in floors two through eight in the Ferguson Building, 16 rental apartments in the eight-story Booth Building, four apartments in the upper two floors of the Bateman-Kennedy Building, and retail and rental space on ground floors and basement areas of all three structures.
Lawrence said he knows he isn’t popular with City Council members. The council voted in 2018 to rescind an agreement to commit more than $3.8 million in tax-increment financing funding for what was dubbed Springfield Commons. That vote came after Lawrence encountered financing problems that led him to accrue $1.2 million in unpaid benefits and payments to union workers and vendors, respectively – a debt that remains unpaid, to the chagrin of council members and other city officials.
The project began in 2012 during the tenure of Mayor Mike Houston and continued under Mayor Jim Langfelder, who first took office in 2015. Almost $1 million in TIF funds had been paid for completed work when Langfelder’s administration ceased further payments for project reimbursements. The council vote rescinding the TIF agreement followed.
Work on the project stalled in 2016 after Lawrence expanded the scope of the project without permission from his lender and the bank cut off his financing. Lawrence then defaulted on his construction loan with his previous lender, First Bankers Trust Co., which sought to foreclose on the property in October 2018.
The council in September 2020 agreed to a $3.15 million TIF funding request from a group that took over the project: New York-based Thomas Lee of JTC Lockwood, who became the developer, and Lawrence Selevan, chief executive officer of the New York-based investment banking firm Chesterfield Faring Ltd. The agreement included the contingency that the group had to pay outstanding debt owed to unions and contractors.
Chesterfield Faring, as part of an agreement with Rick Lawrence, had purchased Lawrence’s mortgage for the three buildings from First Bankers Trust.
Chesterfield Faring later purchased two other significant downtown properties, the Illinois Building on Adams Street and the PNC Building at Fifth and Washington streets. The firm recently closed on more than $3 million in energy-improvement loans for those two properties from the Illinois Finance Authority’s Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program, also known as C-PACE.
Before securing the $3.15 million commitment in city TIF funds in 2020, Lee assured the City Council that Lawrence wouldn’t be part of the development going forward. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continued, slowing the pace of business development nationwide, the development of the three buildings stalled.
The TIF agreement with the city expired in 2021 when Chesterfield Faring and Lee failed to secure financing, move forward with the project and pay off the debts accrued by Rick Lawrence, Springfield Corporation Counsel Jim Zerkle said. Both Lee and Chesterfield Faring told city officials the pandemic’s disruption in financial markets played a major role in the situation, Zerkle said.
Lee has since withdrawn from the project. Chesterfield Faring now is looking for another developer, Langfelder said.
Selevan declined comment to Illinois Times, and Lee didn’t respond to requests for comment.
After a new developer is selected, and if that developer wants the council to consider TIF funding again for the project, the $1.2 million in debts to unions and vendors is “definitely an issue that has to be addressed,” Langfelder said.
But the mayor said he has confidence in Selevan, who has final control over the buildings’ fate because he controls the purse strings.
Selevan “wants to see that project go forward because he has a lot on the line,” Langfelder said. “He’s been trying before the pandemic and since the pandemic to move the ball forward.”
Zerkle added that Selevan is “definitely committed to trying to find a way forward to get the entire project done, which is what the city supports.” Lawrence was critical of the city for taking several months to approve his building permit for repairs so Aunt Lou’s Soul Food can move into the Ferguson building. The restaurant Vele left the site two years ago and reopened on Springfield’s west side.
“Nobody from the city wanted to be helpful,” Lawrence said. Nate Bottom, Springfield’s public works director, and Josh Roughly, the city’s building official, disagreed, saying the evaluation time for the building permit was within the average range for a project of its type.
“We were very cooperative,” Bottom said.
Lawrence responded, “It’s not worth getting into a big old finger-pointing contest over.”
The $50,000 in work is for “temporary fixes” to the building and preparation for future phases if the overall project progresses, Roughly said.
If a new developer is found, Lawrence said he doesn’t know whether he would remain the owner of the buildings. He said he would like to be the project’s developer “but the city doesn’t want me to be.” City Council members have said they don’t want Lawrence involved.
Lawrence said he doubts Selevan wants him to be the developer, either. According to Lawrence, Selevan “doesn’t want to do anything that would cause a problem with the city, and I can understand that. I was kind of told by the city to go pound salt and find something else to do.”
Lawrence said he is committed to “do whatever I need to do to make sure everybody gets paid.”
