The Big Takeover
Mangen knew that Jewel was developing the tract bordered by Roosevelt, Wabash, 13th Street, and State–the food giant had bought up just about every piece of land there but 1239 S. State, the piece Mangen’s dinner theater stood on. The transients from the St. James Hotel across the alley who used to help out at Tommy Gun’s–one even painted the murals of Prohibition-era gangsters on the walls–had all moved away when the hotel was shuttered for demolition.
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It was Sanfratello who started Tommy Gun’s Garage in 1987. Mangen worked there from the start, bringing clever marketing skills and dinner-theater credentials from the Dry Gulch in Schiller Park and King’s Manor in Naperville. In 1989 Sanfratello sold the business to Mangen and her parents for $290,000. He collects a few thousand in rent from them each month, and with his son Bob Jr. runs Bobby McGee’s tavern, the building’s other commercial enterprise.
Filler left behind his business card and a promise to get back to them. Instead, a few weeks went by and then a letter arrived. It said the building would be the subject of a condemnation hearing on July 27.
When the Community Development Commission met on July 27, Mangen and the Sanfratellos showed up to plead their case. Bob Sanfratello Jr. had been down this path before. Last year the city seized the building on South Prairie that housed his construction company in order to build another McCormick Place parking lot. It took a lawyer to get Sanfratello more money from the city than he’d paid to buy the property the year before. The city never did find his company another place to go, so he moved across town to 49th and Central. “I wanted to stay where I was but I couldn’t afford it any more, and I was hearing horror stories about these condemnations. I got out, but with what I’ve lost in business, they’re still killing me.”
