The builder who was poised to close on Northbrook’s huge Green Acres Country Club said late Thursday that his investors have balked, and he’s informed the club’s real estate brokers so they may seek other buyers.
Rick Swanson of Lake Forest’s Swanson Development said that the two private equity firms that were to combine to finance the purchase of the property at 916 Dundee Road have backed out, citing the risk inherent in funding a cash purchase, instead of an option dependent on getting the kind of village approvals that would make the venture profitable.
But Green Acres needs money by Dec. 31 to satisfy demands of its own lenders to forestall foreclosure, Swanson said.
“We wanted to give it back to them to see if they could try and get a buyer by the end of the year,” he said
Representatives of Green Acres’ brokers, Colliers International, were not immediately available for comment.
“I still really want to do this deal, and the village has been terrific,” Swanson said, saying he’s looking for a way to make it work. “It’s not over ’til its over, and every deal dies three times before it happens.”
He said Green Acres brokers had asked him, “if there was any hiccup in the deal, to let them know, so they could contact other bidders who could make it happen by the end of the year.”
But he said he realizes “there’s not a lot of people who have the guns to get there by the end of the year.”
The 125-acre property is the biggest piece of land to become available in Northbrook for about 30 years, and dozens of builders were said to have bid on it.
A Green Acres project would be Swanson’s biggest, though the firm has built or sold lots on tracts nearly that size. They include Gurnee’s 48-acre Aberdale Estates, 58-acre Emerald Ridge in Lindenhurst, and three big ones in Lake Forest: 60-acre Arbor Ridge; the 54-acre Windridge Subdivision; and the 90-acre Evergreen Subdivision.
Swanson said Dec. 1 that he was prepared to satisfy Northbrook impact donation rules by giving the Northbrook Park District a park for the use of the underserved east side of the village. He also said that he would endeavor to keep entrances to any development away from Lee Road, to avoid adding traffic to that quiet street.
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