Alison Victoria Shares That Her Permit Privileges Have Been Reinstated in Chicago

From House Beautiful

HGTV's Alison Victoria finally has some good news following the drama around her ex-business partner Donovan Eckhardt. In July 2019, after Eckhard completed work without a permit, the pair was officially blocked from filing new work permits in the city of Chicago, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Now, over a year and a half later, the designer's privileges have been restored.

Victoria took to Instagram on Thursday to announce that her permit privileges had been reinstated by the city of Chicago. "While it's not exactly an award, it certainly feels like a badge of honor," she wrote, adding that she's grateful for the Department of Buildings for acknowledging her hard work, as well as her legal team: "you are everything onwards and upwards." She ended her post with a quote from the movie Fight Club: "The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly."

As a refresher, the City's decision to block Victoria and Eckhardt from filing new permits came after months of illegal work done by Eckhardt and his business Greymark Development Group LLC. The Sun-Times reported that he had worked without a permit on 11 different properties (which were then issued stop-work orders). He also failed to get final inspections for four properties.

Since a handful of these homes had been featured on Windy City Rehab, Victoria was held responsible, despite the fact that —as shown in season 2—she was not initially aware of Eckhardt's actions, as she mainly focused on design while he handled finances and acted as the contractor.

In addition to Eckhardt's illegal work on-site, he had also allocated funds from his shared account with Victoria to his business's account. This all led Victoria to cut ties with him.

HGTV announced last month that Windy City Rehab will return with new episodes later this year. Now that her permits have been restored, we're excited to see all the new projects Victoria will tackle solo.

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