Chicago real estate heavyweights Mike Reschke and Theodore “Ted” Koenig are hauling a former business partner into court, claiming he quietly grabbed control of a Mount Pleasant development site and helped himself to their money along the way. At the center of the fight is a roughly 34-acre parcel, hundreds of thousands of dollars in development funding and a demand that the land transfer be unwound and their cash returned.
According to a complaint filed Feb. 13 in Cook County Circuit Court, Reschke, who is chairman and CEO of The Prime Group, and Koenig, CEO of Monroe Capital, accuse former Primestone Residential manager David Trandel of misappropriating as much as $2 million and routing the Mount Pleasant purchase through a limited liability company that stayed in his name. The lawsuit says Trandel later took out a sizable mortgage on the property while telling investors he had a $3.2 million sale lined up with homebuilding giant Lennar. The plaintiffs are asking the court to force Trandel to return the parcel, repay their investment and turn over full company accounting, as reported by The Real Deal.
What the complaint says
The filing attaches emails and payment requests that Reschke and Koenig say show Trandel repeatedly asking for money tied to the Mount Pleasant transaction, including multiple $25,000 payments he requested be made directly to himself. When Koenig questioned one of those requests, Trandel replied that the $25,000 “is for me personally … to live … it is my means,” according to the complaint. The suit further alleges that Trandel closed on the land through an entity called SST Old Green Bay Road LLC and then secured a $1.5 million mortgage from an entity tied to investor Lowell Kraff, a loan the plaintiffs label commercially unreasonable compared with the parcel’s $925,000 purchase price, according to The Real Deal. SEC filings list a Lowell D. Kraff as a named investor in other ventures.
Local development background
The disputed land has been a recurring topic in Mount Pleasant planning talks. Primestone Residential floated a subdivision called the Sanctuary at Pike River and sought rezoning for about 34.28 acres between Old Green Bay Road and Royal Oaks Drive. Village trustees signed off on a zoning map amendment in March 2025 but postponed final plat approval until a traffic impact study and other engineering requirements were satisfied, local reporting shows. That sequence of local approvals, coupled with the potential sale to a major homebuilder, is what the plaintiffs say makes fast court action critical, according to local records and reporting by Racine County Eye.
The people involved
Reschke, founder and chairman of The Prime Group, is listed on the company’s site as its chairman and CEO. Koenig is chairman and CEO of Monroe Capital, a Chicago-based private credit firm. Both men say they put up capital for Primestone projects while Trandel handled the day-to-day development work. The lawsuit hinges on whether Trandel went rogue when he closed on and encumbered the Mount Pleasant land, or whether those moves were legitimate company business that his partners later came to regret.
What comes next
The plaintiffs want a Cook County judge to void Trandel’s transfer of the site, return the parcel to the company and order repayment of roughly $2 million in what they describe as misappropriated funds. If the court grants preliminary relief, it could put any pending sale on ice and require a detailed accounting of Primestone’s books. If that early relief is denied, the case is likely to grind through months of civil litigation and discovery over who truly owns the land, how the loans were structured and where all the money ultimately went.
