The owner of Chicago's long-abandoned Rainforest Café building has been ordered to pay $10 million over a loan default, the latest blow for a River North property that has sat empty since the jungle-themed restaurant shut its doors more than five years ago. The two-story, 22,000-square-foot building at 605 N. Clark St. once drew tourists and families with its animatronic animals and thunderstorm effects, but it has stood vacant since the restaurant closed in August 2020.
A Judgment Years in the Making
The $10 million figure comes from Crain's Chicago Business, which reported Tuesday that the building's owner was ordered to pay that amount over the defaulted loan. The judgment follows a $9.3 million foreclosure lawsuit against the building's former landlord, according to a report from cbsnews.com, which said the suit alleges the owner defaulted on an $8.3 million loan tied to the property.
The property owner, identified elsewhere as Sean Conlon, told Crain's that the dispute stemmed from just one late payment and that he was working to refinance, per the same cbsnews.com account. An investment partnership led by Conlon has owned the Clark Street building since 2015, when it paid about $13.7 million for the site while the Rainforest Café was still operating, according to WBEZ Chicago. WBEZ reported that the lender behind an $8.3 million bridge loan on the property filed its own foreclosure suit against Conlon's partnership in October, and that Conlon told the station he had since refinanced that loan and other properties — though Cook County public records cited by WBEZ did not yet reflect that refinancing.
From Animatronic Jungle to Failed Dispensary
The Rainforest Café operated at the Clark Street address from 1997 until it closed in August 2020, WBEZ reported, and the building has remained empty ever since. Plans to fill the space took a turn toward cannabis retail: Progressive Treatment Solutions first disclosed proposals for a dispensary there in April 2022, and the plan won approval from local and state agencies, according to a CoStar report. But that plan collapsed — the owners terminated the company's lease in January 2024 because of what CoStar described as abandonment of the space, after the proposal became tangled in two lawsuits challenging its legality on the grounds that it would have sat within 1,500 feet of other dispensaries.
One description of the property noted that it has sat empty for five and a half years since the restaurant's closure, per WBEZ. The River North stretch has seen other big, flashy tenants vanish and leave gaps behind: the former Hard Rock Café at 63 W. Ontario St. closed in January and has likewise remained a vacant space ever since, according to cbsnews.com.
What Comes Next
It remains unclear how the newly reported $10 million judgment relates to the earlier $9.3 million foreclosure figure, or what the breakdown of that amount includes. The dossier of public reporting reviewed for this article does not specify whether the foreclosure case has been resolved, whether any sale of the property has been scheduled, or what the building's current listing status is. For now, the former home of animatronic gorillas and tropical storms sits dark on one of River North's busiest corners, its financial and physical future still an open question.
