$64,300 a Key: Endeavor Buys RLJ’s Midway Portfolio for $68 Million, Half the 2006 Price

RLJ Lodging Trust sold its seven-hotel Midway Airport cluster for $68 million. That is about $64,300 a key — roughly half what the REIT paid for the same real estate in 2006 — and the buyer financed it with a $90 million loan. The numbers will show up in every Chicago and airport-hotel underwriting sheet this quarter.

The Real Deal reported on Oct. 25 that Oakbrook Terrace-based Endeavor Hotels, led by principals Vishal Thakkar and Ron Thakkar, bought The Midway Hotel Center and an adjacent restaurant property from Bethesda, Maryland-based RLJ Lodging Trust for $68 million. Cook County property records back the price and the financing, The Real Deal said. Neither RLJ nor Endeavor responded to requests for comment.

The portfolio has 1,057 rooms across seven branded hotels plus a TGI Friday’s at 6600 South Cicero Avenue. Do the math and you get about $64,300 a key ($68 million ÷ 1,057). RLJ paid $139 million for the same cluster in 2006, public records show — so the exit is about 51% below that purchase price, or roughly half.

The Deal in Numbers

Item	Figure
Portfolio	Midway Hotel Center: 7 hotels + TGI Friday’s, Cicero Avenue corridor
Rooms	1,057
Price	$68.0 million (about $64,300 per key)
2006 purchase (RLJ)	$139 million
Discount vs. 2006	About 51% (roughly half)
Acquisition loan	$90 million from Access Point Financial
Buyer	Endeavor Hotels (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.)
Seller	RLJ Lodging Trust (Bethesda, Md.)

The per-key and discount figures are our math from the disclosed numbers. (For how that price sits against other 2026 trades, see our 2026 hotel price-per-key guide.) Neither side has disclosed trailing NOI, a cap rate, occupancy or RevPAR for the cluster.

What’s in the Portfolio

All seven hotels sit on South Cicero Avenue next to Chicago Midway International Airport, per The Real Deal’s rundown of the deeds:

• Chicago Marriott Midway, 6520 S. Cicero — 200 rooms
• Hilton Garden Inn Midway, 6530 S. Cicero — 174 rooms
• Courtyard Chicago Midway Airport, 6610 S. Cicero — 174 rooms
• Hampton Inn Chicago-Midway, 6540 S. Cicero — 170 rooms (133 rooms + 37 suites)
• Holiday Inn Express & Suites, 6500 S. Cicero — 104 rooms (71 rooms + 33 suites)
• Fairfield Inn & Suites, 6630 S. Cicero — 114 rooms (88 rooms + 26 suites)
• Sleep Inn Midway, 6650 S. Cicero — 121 rooms

The Weglarz family developed the hotels and sold them to RLJ in 2006. The same family later sold land for the Wind Creek Casino in the south suburbs for $25 million in 2022, The Real Deal reported.

Who Bought It, and How They Paid

Endeavor Hotels is a hospitality firm based in Oakbrook Terrace. Vishal Thakkar and his brother Ron are the principals. The Real Deal said Endeavor closed with a $90 million mortgage from Atlanta-based Access Point Financial, a specialty hospitality lender. That is $22 million more than the purchase price — a structure that, as The Real Deal noted, points to planned property improvements, though neither side has disclosed a renovation budget or a property-improvement plan.

In other words: the buyer did not just finance the real estate. It financed headroom for capex on day one. For owners watching loan availability, that is the second number that matters after the $64,300-per-key print.

What It Means for Hotel Owners