The 30-story Wyndham Springfield City Centre, closed since March 2025 by water damage that local police and the FBI were investigating as an alleged act of vandalism, is going up for sale as part of bankruptcy proceedings.
Bids for the aging former hotel are due by Sept. 15, according to a July 30 news release.
“The former Wyndham City Centre represents one of the most visible buildings to come to market in central Illinois in recent years,” Jamie Cote, senior director at Northbrook-based Hilco Global, said in the company’s news release.
“Its scale, downtown location and established convention infrastructure provide a strong foundation for buyers seeking to reposition, redevelop and restore an iconic hotel asset or redevelop the city block into something else entirely,” Cote said.
The sale of the iconic downtown Springfield building at 700 E. Adams St., with 369 hotel rooms and 27 apartment units, will be finalized by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Texas as part of Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy filed in March 2026 by Tower Capital Group.
The property is valued at $7 million, according to bankruptcy documents filed by Tower, which is owned by Tower General Manager Al Rajabi of San Antonio, Texas.
The planned sale and bid deadline were announced by Hilco Real Estate LLC, which is part of Hilco Global, a financial services company.
Cote and Dean Greer, a San Antonio lawyer representing Tower Capital, didn’t immediately return phone calls from Illinois Times.
It is unclear how soon ownership of the Wyndham might change hands as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. It’s also unknown whether or how soon a sale might lead to improvements at the site.
The Hilco news release says the building totals more than 374,200 square feet of space. In addition to hotel rooms and apartments, the building, originally constructed in 1972, includes a restaurant, lounge, cafe, indoor pool, fitness center, business center and an adjacent parking garage.
There is about 50,000 square feet of meeting, banquet and event space, and the Hilco release said a rooftop communications lease generates monthly revenue of more than $12,000.
The hotel began as Forum 30 in 1973 and began to be known as the Springfield Hilton in 1980. The hotel’s brand switched to Wyndham in 2015.
Illinois Times reported on May 20 about the impending settlement of a civil lawsuit between plaintiffs Full Service Hospitality LLC and Tower Capital Group – both entities connected with Rajabi – and defendant Affiliated FM Insurance Co.
The settlement, approved July 6 by Texas-based U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Aubrey Thomas, resolved a lawsuit filed by Full Service and Tower Capital in June 2025 that said Affiliated breached a contract by failing to reimburse Full Service and Tower Capital for the water damage.
Rajabi, who bought the hotel from the previous owner in a foreclosure sale for $7.4 million in 2019, never made public any estimate of how much repairs would cost.
But he said in the suit that the flooding caused “significant damage to the hotel’s restaurants, meeting rooms, banquet rooms, hotel rooms, apartment units and common spaces located on the majority of the hotel’s 30 floors.”
Affiliated contended in court documents that it denied Rajabi’s claim because Springfield law enforcement authorities were investigating the damage as a suspected case of vandalism.
Affiliated told Rajabi in a letter in August 2025 that the vandalism in the early morning hours of March 27, 2025, “was intentionally caused by Mr. Rajabi, Mr. Rajabi colluded with others to cause the damage, and/or the damage was caused by other individuals with the knowledge of Mr. Rajabi.”
Affiliated also said Rajabi filed a fraudulent claim related to a purported March 2024 lightning strike on the hotel building that resulted in Affiliated paying Rajabi $4.05 million.
Rajabi’s lawyers said in an email to Illinois Times last year that the allegations against him were “baseless.”
A Springfield Police Department spokesperson told the newspaper in 2025 that its investigation into the water damage was taken over by the FBI. The FBI has declined comment, and no arrests have been made.
The July 6 settlement of the civil lawsuit included both sides dropping their claims and counterclaims against each other, according to the agreement filed in Bankruptcy Court.
The agreement didn’t provide for the payment of any money. As a result, it appears that the insurance company won’t pay anything to Rajabi for needed repairs related to the water damage. And the agreement didn’t require Rajabi to repay the money he received from Affiliated in connection with the lightning strike claim.
The Springfield City Council in 2022 denied several zoning variance requests by a New York-based developer to convert the building into mostly market-rate apartments and some hotel rooms.
Rajabi appeared in front of the council and voiced frustration about the council’s decisions that, in effect, blocked what he described as a potential $40 million-plus acquisition and renovation of the hotel by developer GoodHomes.
The latest proposal for the variance came from Tower Capital in spring 2023, shortly before former mayor Jim Langfelder, a supporter of the plan, was defeated in a bid for a third consecutive term by current Mayor Misty Buscher.
Based on discussions with Langfelder, Tower said the company had hoped to take advantage of about $18.75 million in tax-related incentives from the city. However, Buscher said she estimated that the assistance package of property, hotel-motel and sales taxes available from the city would have amounted to $9 million or $10 million at most.
Rajabi never tried to take Buscher up on the lower offer. Rajabi put the Wyndham up for online auction that ended in April 2024, but the auction failed to result in a sale.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer with Illinois Times. He can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com, 217-679-7810 or www.x.DeanOlsenIT.
Great work Dean!