Richard Branson's highly anticipated Virgin Hotels brand today will finally announce its first deal - in downtown Chicago.  A year after Virgin Hotels' launch, Virgin has completed the purchase of the landmark, 27-story Dearborn Bank Building at 203 N. Wabash.  TWITTER: Follow Hotel Check-In's BarbDeLollis  HOTEL NEWS: Hotel lobby blasts White House's proposed ethics rule  PHOTO GALLERY: Tour Virgin Atlantic's Heathrow Clubhouse  Virgin and hotel developer John Buck Co. will spend the next two years converting the Art Deco tower into a 250-room hotel. John Buck Co., by the way, previously developed the hip Standard hotel in New York.  Now, I know you want all the juicy details about the restaurants, lounges, meeting space and other interesting public areas and concept that Virgin's planning - but, unfortunately and understandably, Virgin U.S. chief Anthony Marino is keeping silent.  SIR RICHARD BRANSON: Rules, fees among his hotel pet peeves  Why give rivals a head start on mimicking?  I do, however, have plenty of other details to share about how the 40-year-old Virgin brand plans to attack the hotel world.  Chicago's Virgin Hotel may not be No. 1  For one thing, by the time this hotel opens in the fall of 2013, Marino tells me that there might be one other Virgin Hotel open.  "There's a good chance that Chicago may be the first announcement but not our first opening," he says.  Finding the perfect hotel in an ideal location to craft into a Virgin Hotel has taken a year largely due to the difficult real estate market, but Marino says that in that same period, other deals that would involve less construction - and less time - have also arisen.  It's possible that Virgin could hang its name on an existing but struggling chic hotel in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles Miami or Washington D.C., he says.  London - Virgin's corporate backyard - is also now on Virgin Hotels' radar screen. Marino says trendy Shoreditch on the East End looks good, but they're looking at the entire city.  "Everybody's parking their money there because it's safe. It's not easy to find good deals there."  In terms of the Chicago site, it's within walking distance to the river and several other stylish, four-star hotels that it will compete with such as the Wit (a DoubleTree hotel at 201 N. State Street) and one of Kimpton's Monaco hotels right next door (225 N. Wabash).  Marino says that he and his team were "pinching" themselves when they found the structure.  "This is a landmark building in the city right in the heart of the Loop. It's a block off Michigan Avenue and a block off the river," Marino says. "It has all of these beautiful features that really make you feel comfortable. You're in a part of history. But at the same time, we can do things to it that we know travelers care about and make it into a Virgin Hotel."  Rooms, he adds, also have a surprising amount of light and rooms on one side of the building overlook Millennium Park.  Tower tenants include Illinois arts advocacy group  Not everyone's 100% thrilled by the development - namely, some of the tower's tenants.  "I have mixed emotions about the project," Ra Joy, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois, a statewide arts advocacy organization, tells me via email.  "We've enjoyed having our office located in the 203 N. Wabash building and are now having to find new digs," Joy says.  "On the other hand, it's exciting to think about how a Sir Richard Branson branded hotel might contribute to Chicago's already beautiful downtown," he says. "If the hotel represents creativity and innovation, it could easily become a go-to place for an after-work drink or to host out-of-town visitors."  For Virgin, Chicago also makes sense because it serves more than 300,000 passengers annually in and out of Chicago via Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America. "We are projected to double that in 2012," Virgin spokeswoman Christine Choi tells me.  More broadly, Chicago is increasingly gaining a reputation as a city with interesting hotels.  Earlier this month, Ian Schrager launched his stylish, mid-priced "Public" hotel brand about a mile away, and Radisson-parent Carlson is launching its edgy Radisson Blu brand in the nearby Aqua building next month.  PHOTO GALLERY: Hard-hat tour of Chicago's hip Radisson Blu  Virgin Hotels: No big rush  I asked Marino why it has taken so long to get a hotel in the works, given the high-profile launch a year ago and rumors of shopping in various markets such as the area near New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and even San Diego.  "Finding the right property and the right location with the right kind of a deal is a very challenging thing to do," he says.  "When we launched the business, all the publicly traded real estate investment trusts (such as Pebblebrook and Sunstone) were very active in the market and bidding up properties to very high prices that made it difficult to execute deals that had sensible returns," Marino tells me.  Also, due to Virgin's loyal customer base, he says it wasn't a good idea to rush a property that perhaps didn't quit fit the ideal "Virgin" image.  "We've had many opportunities to fly the flag, but we felt the customer would ask, 'Is this really what a Virgin Hotel is?' The blessing of our brand is that we have 60 million customers around the world. The flip side is that if you're got to do the right thing, this has to be a long-term growth plan."
Richard Branson's Virgin Hotel team today will announce their first hotel deal: A 250-room hotel in an historic, light-filled 27-story tower.