Wyndham Springfield City Centre main entrance, 700 block of East Adams Street, 2025 (SCHS)
Three factors drew attention to Springfield’s Forum 30 hotel even before it opened in 1974: its height, its site and its whiz-kid developer.
At 30 stories high, the building was the tallest in downstate Illinois – by most measurements even taller than the state Capitol five blocks away. (See Footnote 1.) Forum 30’s developers also spent months jousting with Springfield’s future convention center over a street corner both had plans for.
The hotel’s lead developer, Walter “Wally” Rogers, was only in his late 20s when he embarked on his Springfield venture, but he already had built a 21-story structure – then thought to be downstate’s tallest private building – in Champaign. But that project, according to a later account, was “tainted by bribery, arrests, prison sentences, a monthslong zoning controversy, a tense feud between the builder and city staff, and even fraud.”
“You had all these stories about Wally, and you didn’t know what was true,” former Champaign planning commission member Harold “Skip” LeGrande told Champaign News-Gazette reporter Kirby Pringle in 2006. “It was a strange deal all the way around.”
The former Forum 30, which takes up the block of downtown Springfield bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Adams and Monroe streets, opened in December 1973. (See Footnote 2.)
State Journal-Register photo layout during construction, June 1973. The roof of the Forum 30 became a favorite spot of photographers seeking panoramic views of downtown Springfield. (Courtesy SJ-R)
Original plans called for 14 floors of hotel rooms, five floors of apartments (the Rogers family planned to live in one), seven floors of offices, banquet facilities on the 29th level, and Club-on-30, a high-end restaurant, on the top floor. A coffee shop and less elaborate restaurants were slated for the ground floors. Other amenities included a health club and heated swimming pool.
Rogers, owing almost $16 million to a Massachusetts-based lender, lost control of the Forum 30 in July 1975. Over the next five decades, the building went through several owners, several hotel franchises and a variety of financial crises. In the 2020s, the Springfield City Council rejected proposals to convert many of the building’s hotel rooms into apartments.
When this entry was written (April 2025), the then-Wyndham Springfield City Centre was closed indefinitely following a mysterious case of vandalism. Responding to an alarm March 27, firefighters found flooding had damaged the elevator system and that the fire alarm and sprinkler system wasn’t working properly.
Wally Rogers, 1978 (Peoria Journal Star)
Wally Rogers got into hotel construction through his Urbana-based heating/plumbing business, Architectural and Mechanical Systems. His first big project, Champaign’s Century 21 (Rogers liked to include the number of stories in his buildings when naming them) was designed as a hotel/shopping complex.
It opened in 1972 after a protracted zoning battle. At one point during that process, a member of the city planning commission “approached Rogers and told him he would vote for the rezoning and try to persuade others on the panel to do the same – for $5,000,” Pringle wrote in 2006.
Even though, as Rogers’ own attorney told Pringle, “Wally Rogers did not have a reputation in the community for being the most honest guy,” Rogers reported the bribe solicitation to state police. The planning commission member ultimately went to jail.
Rogers finally got his zoning change, but Century 21 lost money anyway, and Rogers was forced to sell it in 1974.
By then, however, he was deeply involved with his Springfield project, originally known as the Forum 30 Ramada – and in a legal spat with the Springfield Metropolitan Exposition and Auditorium Authority. The dispute revolved around property on the northwest corner of Eighth and Adams streets, catty-corner from the hotel. Forum 30 owned the site, which Rogers said would be used for hotel parking.
However, the SMEAA’s site plans called for the convention center (today’s BOS Center) to occupy the property. At one point, Rogers’ lawsuit threat stymied the SMEAA’s attempt to sell construction bonds. Eventually, Rogers gave up the corner in return for an option on 100 spots in the convention center’s own parking ramp. But the dispute had public relations ramifications.
“It is unfortunate that these actions cost the owners of Forum 30 much of the good will that their construction of the imposing building could have achieved for them,” the State Journal-Register said in an editorial that otherwise praised the SMEAA/hotel compromise.
Rogers ran into more serious trouble shortly afterwards. In 1978, the FBI had him extradited from Great Britain on charges he had submitted false documents to obtain $8.5 million in loans (none of which apparently was used for Forum 30 financing). Rogers was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
In 2006, Rogers’ former lawyer, Arthur Lerner of Champaign, told reporter Pringle he believed Rogers was still alive but no longer living in central Illinois. Pringle was unable to find him.
Footnotes
- One of the earliest questions about the Forum 30 was whether it was taller than the Statehouse five blocks away. State Journal-Register “J-R Line” columnist Jeff Nelson wrote the definitive analysis of that issue on Dec. 26, 1974. Here is his complete answer to a reader’s inquiry.
Comparison drawings of Illinois Capitol vs. Forum 30, 1974; provided by Springfield zoning administrator. (SJ-R)
You think you’re getting around something by excluding the flagpoles, don’t you? That’s because you may know the Capitol has a 45-foot flagpole and Forum 30’s is only 26 feet.
But when you talk about heights, do you mean height above sea level or the height of the actual structures above ground level? The Capitol sits on ground 3.83 feet lower than that of the Forum 30.
Then are you talking about the height of the roof of Forum 30 or the height of the wall? The mushroomed top of Forum 30 is higher than the roof, creating a 41-inch parapet.
All this is just gibberish, anyway, because no matter how you look at it, Forum 30 is taller than the Capitol. It is an even 350 feet above ground level, while the Capitol is 336.1 feet to the top of the lantern dome. Forum 30 is taller even if you eliminate the parapet, and because it sits on higher ground, is still taller even when you take that into consideration.
But if you consider flagpoles, then the Capitol Building is taller by 1.27 feet in structure height and 5.10 feet when considering height above sea level.
That won’t last for long, however. WVEM Radio Station has recently received permission to place a radio antenna atop Forum 30 which will be “less than” (but near) 75 feet tall in its own right.
All the facts, plus the building sketches, were provided by William “Pete” Jones, city zoning administrator.
The Forum 30/Wyndham Springfield may still be the tallest occupiable structure in downstate Illinois, depending on whether the Chicago suburbs count as “downstate” – at least two suburban buildings, the Oakbrook Terrace Tower (431 feet), and 2 Pierce Place in Itasca (395 feet) are taller. No buildings outside the Chicago metro area in Illinois, however, appear to rival the Springfield structure in height. (This calculation also excludes unoccupied structures, especially cell phone towers, which can range up to 400 feet high.)
Dozens of buildings in Chicago, led by the Willis Tower (1,451 feet) are taller than 350 feet above ground level.
- Well, “opened” in a sense. The first public event held at the hotel was a Springfield Urban League dinner featuring California U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, which was held in the Forum 30 ballroom on Dec. 1, 1973. But the hotel kitchen still wasn’t ready, and the food was provided by an outside caterer. Even so, hosting the event at the Forum 30 was a close thing, according to a Nov. 30, 1973, note by SJ-R columnist Toby McDaniel:
Crews are working overtime to finish the Forum 30 Ramada ballroom in time for tomorrow night’s Urban League banquet. It’ll be ready and so will the 600 turkey dinners needed for the league’s Christmas party, say hotel officials. Opening of the hotel itself will be delayed, however, until early January.
A few other events were held in December 1973, and a trickle of restaurants and other tenants moved into their spaces in January. But it took until Feb. 1, 1974, for the hotel to open its first rooms to overnight guests. The top-floor restaurant, Club-on-30, finally started serving patrons on Veterans Day weekend 1974.
McDaniel again:
NOTE PAD – Club-on-30, the red-carpet restaurant atop Forum 30 Ramada, opened to good business over the weekend. Flaming dishes prepared at tableside by general manager George Baur’s staff leave little to be desired. Add to that the view from 30 feet up. Who could imagine little old Springfield looking so good and so big, at least when she has a glow on.
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