Receiver Seeks to Seize Former Pheasant Run Resort Land

The court-appointed manager of Eightfold Capital’s dilapidated Pheasant Run Resort property is trying to ensure it’s not the next to get burned in a western suburb of Chicago.

An affiliate of Miami-based Eightfold, the owner of several dozen acres at 4051 East Main Street in St. Charles, was hit with another lawsuit this month by the receivership that the city requested to oversee the demolition of vacant lodging and entertainment buildings in the wake of an arson by two teens in 2022.

An investor who purchased more than $4 million worth of receivership certificates sold by the court-appointed firm Great Lakes Property Services is seeking to be repaid for its costs to manage the property and tear down the buildings in the two years since it was put in place by a judge, the suit shows.

The investor, an Illinois-based entity called SAL Certificate Holdings LLC that’s controlled by Northbrook-based Larry Herskovitz, wants to seize the property from Eightfold if it isn’t repaid for its costs plus interest. The city claims that the landlord allowed the buildings to deteriorate and jeopardize public safety, according to the litigation.

Neither Eightfold nor St. Charles officials returned requests for comment. An attorney for Herskovitz’s company also didn’t return requests for comment. Following the fire, the city asked a court to appoint Great Lakes as the property’s receiver and pushed it to demolish the structures, citing them as a hazard. The city’s requests were granted.

Pheasant Run Resort opened in 1963 and expanded throughout the 1970s and 1980s into a well-known Midwestern weekend getaway spanning over 250 acres with 473 hotel rooms, several restaurants, a golf course, three pools and spa facilities. It played a big role in shaping the St. Charles economy for decades.

The Eightfold affiliate bought the former resort property out of a $29 million foreclosure suit in 2014. The price it paid isn’t clear from DuPage County records.

But its plan was to inject $5 million into sprucing up the resort. It’s unclear how much it ultimately invested before the golf course was shut down several years later, and then the rest of the resort closed in 2020.

Much of the golf course property — about 86 acres — has since been purchased by a venture of Bartlett-based Greco/DeRosa Investment Group, which bought it for $11.3 million from the DuPage Airport Authority. The airport authority paid Eightfold about $9.8 million for the same land in 2017 to settle a lawsuit over whether the real estate firm could pursue residential development on the site — there were concerns about disruptions to and from plane traffic.

The Greco/DeRosa venture is instead turning the land into a four-building, 1.1 million-square-foot industrial park to the tune of roughly $90 million, according to an earlier cost estimate.

Eightfold also sold part of its holdings to the McGrath Honda dealership that’s now just east of the former resort site for $3.7 million in 2020. It marketed the former resort property for sale via an auction in early 2020, but no bidders were willing to meet the seller’s minimum price threshold.

Still, Eightfold ventures have retained control of the rest of the former Pheasant Run Resort property, which still held several buildings, including a 16-story highrise, until they were demolished last year by Great Lakes at the request of the city. Demolition cost more than $2 million. The resort property is now vacant land.

It’s unclear how or whether Eightfold would put up a fight against the Herskovitz entity’s foreclosure attempt. While Herskovitz’s suit was filed April 8 in DuPage County court, it’s not scheduled to be heard until August, online court records show, although an earlier hearing could still be scheduled.