JOLIET, IL — It’s been two-and-a-half years since I wrote about how downtown Joliet’s former AT&T building was in the midst of a $5 million facelift. And there were all sorts of optimism associated with plans for the property.
While most of downtown Joliet’s successful professional office buildings are owned by John Bays of Bays Investments, the acquisition of the AT&T building by Roselle-based EJ Investment Group marked what seemed like a new direction for downtown Joliet’s landscape.
EJ Investment bought the AT&T building in 2019 through an online auction, and the investors renamed it 65 Riverfront Plaza. The address for the building is 65 W. Webster St.
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In the summer of 2020, it was common to see EJ Investment Group President Marcin Chojnacki and his fellow company executives strolling the sidewalks of downtown Joliet to check out the remodeling of the AT&T property for his investment firm.
During an October 2020 interview, Chojnacki told me that a fitness gym had signed on as his building’s first major tenant. The Studio 65 fitness center would occupy about 16,000 square feet on the first and second floors of the renovated building, according to Chojnacki.
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During that interview from two-and-a-half years ago, the president for EJ Investment Group said the first floor of 65 Riverfront Plaza would be geared toward attracting retail, a restaurant or perhaps a yogurt shop.
He talked about martial arts classes occupying the building.
He talked about courting medical groups, call centers, lawyers and government agencies as prospective tenants to the former AT&T building, 65 W. Webster St.
“We are confident that the fitness center will act as an amenity for the premium office space for the other floors,” Chojnacki told me in 2020.
Unfortunately for everyone, EJ Investment’s vision for the new and improved 65 Riverfront Plaza did not come to fruition. As a result, downtown Joliet remains stuck with an empty 97,000-square-foot building overlooking the dirty canal waters of the Des Plaines River.
This week, I walked the outside of the property, and found sections of the large office building tagged with graffiti. The largest and most noticeable section of graffiti faces the public parking lot used by visitors to the Joliet Area Historical Museum. People from all over the world visit the museum as part of their Route 66 pilgrimage.
This week, when I stopped inside the museum, there were two people touring the museum from France. For Joliet’s tourists, the current view of the 65 Riverfront Plaza can’t leave a good impression on them.
At least one homeless person has their blankets sprawled across the northern side of the building.
Overall, it’s a sad state of affairs, and I’m sure the Rosemont investment company probably has had second thoughts over the past year or two.
Was it such as a wise decision to make a significant capital investment in downtown Joliet, only to see their professional office building remain empty?
Indeed, downtown Joliet has had recent success along North Chicago Street, thanks to the activity at the Rialto Square Theatre and the restaurant scene making a comeback. But, there are still a number of large empty buildings that take up space throughout Joliet’s downtown.
On Monday morning, I called and left a detailed message for the president of EJ Investment Group, explaining the nature of my call.
Chojnacki did not call me back.
I also reached out to Joliet’s economic development director, Cesar Suarez, but he’s apparently prohibited from speaking with the news media now —after talking in January about wanting to bring hundreds of apartment units to the former Sears property near the Louis Joliet Mall.
“John, all media calls are to be routed to the City Manager,” Suarez wrote me on Monday.
It’s been said many times in recent years that downtown Joliet’s is undergoing a revitalization, that it’s coming back to life.
But when I walk the four corners of the former AT&T Building, I see a 97,000-square foot commercial property that can’t land a single tenant. I see an out-of-town investment company, with no ties and connections to the city of Joliet, that spent millions of dollars renovating a large building, giving it a massive facelift, and look what it’s got them.
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