The buyer of a scenic property in northern Wisconsin will get more than just its bar and restaurant: They’ll have a former hideout of Chicago mobster Al Capone.
The 165 hectare wooded site, complete with guard towers and a stone house with 46cm-thick walls, will soon go on the auction block at a starting bid of US$2.6 million.
The bank that foreclosed on the land near Couderay, about 225km northeast of Minneapolis, said Capone owned it in the late 1920s and early 1930s during Prohibition when liquor was banned. Local legend claims that shipments of bootlegged alcohol were flown in on planes that landed on the property’s 15 hectare lake, then loaded onto trucks bound for Chicago.
“He spent a lot of time there,” Chippewa Valley Bank vice president Joe Kinnear said. “Whether it was for getting whiskey out of Canada or whoever knows. It is an incredible property.”
The property was more recently used as a tourist attraction. It includes Capone’s two-story stone home with a massive fireplace, two guard towers — reportedly manned with machine guns whenever Capone visited — a caretakers residence and other outbuildings.
Kinnear said the bar on the property was built from what was originally Capone’s eight-stall garage and still includes some portholes built to shoot through.
“It’s pretty neat,” he said.
The bank will auction off “The Hideout, Al Capone’s Northwoods Retreat” on the steps of the Sawyer County Courthouse in Hayward on Oct. 8.
The bank acquired the property after foreclosing on owner Guy Houston and his company The Hideout Inc in April last year, court records showed.
The Houston family bought the property in the 1950s from Capone’s estate and had operated it as a seasonal bar and restaurant, known for its prime rib, and offered guided tours focusing on the Capone lore.
Kinnear said the bank’s bid of US$2.6 million to recover its money is not expected to be the only offer. He said two or three other bidders were interested, perhaps to use it as a retreat, and there has long been talk about developing the property.
“It was appraised years ago at US$3.7 million,” he said.
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