Chicago Development News [Archive]

BVictor1

October 26th, 2004, 04:06 PM

Reshaping the streetwall
Chicago's dramatic cliff of buildings faces a major makeover. And much more is at stake here than architecture.

http://images.chicagotribune.com/media/graphic/2004-10/14813581.gif

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published October 26, 2004

It's the face of Chicago, this row of buildings is, and it's about to experience one of the most significant bursts of construction since it started to take shape at the end of the 19th Century.

Some of the prospects are dazzling, others depressing. What they reveal is the need for a sharper set of planning tools as developers rush to capitalize on the success of Millennium Park by erecting new condo towers that could add to the row's glory or mar it forever.

The row, or streetwall, extends like a cliff along the western edge of Grant Park from Randolph Street on the north to Roosevelt Road on the south. For drop-dead grandeur, it is every bit the equal of the buildings that line New York's Central Park. Two years ago, fearing that a building boom could blight this magnificent stretch with the sort of hideous concrete slabs rising in River North, Mayor Richard Daley wisely turned all but the southernmost block of the streetwall into a landmark district, giving the city tight control over future construction.

Architects fumed, saying the district would curb their creativity. The city denied it wanted to impose a straitjacket. Now, there is evidence to support both sides -- and to remind us, in this age of spectacular buildings by the likes of Frank Gehry, that mundane planning instruments still wield tremendous influence over the quality of the cityscape.

On the plus side, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies has advanced a boldly innovative plan for a new building that would rise just north of its present home at 618 S. Michigan Ave. The design, expected to be approved in November by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, calls for a 10-story structure with a diamond-like facade of folding glass. It is so skillfully done that it tempts one to say that the doomsaying architects were wrong about city bureaucrats squelching their style.

Yet precisely that sort of meddling helped compromise the shape of a now-approved condo highrise at 1000 S. Michigan. It represents a far more telling case than Spertus of how the district will collide with marketplace realities. The result: An acceptable design, but hardly one for the art history books.

The contrast is equally sharp on the north and south ends of the streetwall where new towers will form giant bookends for the district even though they are outside its borders and are not governed by its constraints.

On the north, the soon-to-be-finished Heritage at Millennium Park, where Daley is to live, uses contemporary architecture to create a surprisingly graceful transition between the row's historic buildings and the much-taller modern towers along Randolph Street. Yet to the south, at 1160 S. Michigan, a setback skyscraper called the Columbian -- it has yet to begin construction -- shapes up as a disappointing retro design, a missed opportunity to end the streetwall with an innovative exclamation point.

Much more is at stake here than how to extend the streetwall's stunning smorgasbord of styles -- Venetian Gothic, Romanesque Revival, Classical Revival, Chicago School -- into the 21st Century. The streetwall is the image Chicago projects to the world. It appears on postcards, on television, and now is more visible than ever because of the throngs that have surged into Millennium Park.

But the park, which lines the streetwall's northern edge, has transformed the real estate dynamics of its environs, turning a sleepy business zone into a bustling neighborhood that teems with tourists. The booming Central Station residential development has had a similar impact near the row's south end.

As construction cranes prepare to move in, the question looms: Does the city have the right set of tools to guide the streetwall's growth?

Few are aware that the city has never gotten around to formally approving its tools, a series of draft design guidelines made public two years ago. As city landmarks officials acknowledge, the buildings that have been approved so far are, in effect, test cases. What those cases show is that the guidelines, for all their admirable sophistication, still need to be tweaked.

Prepared by the Chicago firm Gonzalez Hasbrouck, the guidelines are a kind of architectural recipe book, with do's and don't's that cover everything from additions to new construction. New buildings can be built on vacant lots in the district and, the guidelines say, they may replace existing buildings that don't contribute to the district's character. New buildings, the guidelines add, are supposed to exhibit "sound contemporary design" that respects the district's historic qualities.

But divining exactly what that means can prove as difficult as teasing out the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famously vague definition of pornography: You know it when you see it. As the Spertus case shows, such judgments are invariably subjective.

Benefits of Millennium Park

Ten years ago, when aesthetic conservatism reigned at Daley's City Hall, landmarks officials might have told the architects of the Spertus plan, the Chicago firm of Krueck & Sexton, to slap some classical columns on their facade. Today, though, the design enjoys the benefits of the post-Millennium Park effect, which has created a new receptiveness to contemporary design at City Hall.

Instead of hammering the plan for not following the prevailing masonry exteriors in the district (brick, stone and terra cotta) city landmarks officials went out of their way to be open to it, even observing that glass can be thought as the terra cotta of today.

This is stretching standards like salt-water taffy, but the Spertus plan is so good it's easy to see why that's happening.

Designed to house the institute's college, library and museum, the building will strike a remarkable balance between respecting the row and making a powerful contemporary statement. Like buildings throughout the district, it will be strongly vertical, subtly suggesting the three-part division of a classical column. Its folding glass facade promises to match the ever-varying shade and shadow patterns of the district's richly articulated historic buildings.

But, this being Chicago, there's a catch: Spertus seems likely to prove an exception, not the rule.

First, it's a small building, just 161 feet tall and located in the middle of a block rather than at a prominent corner site. Second, the client is a non-profit institution, not a profit-making developer who wants to build the maximum amount of space. Indeed, the building's top will be nearly 120 feet shorter than the height ceiling suggested by the guidelines.

Elsewhere, the tension between business-as-usual development and the design guidelines is clear, present and potentially dangerous.

Consider the saga of 1000 S. Michigan, which was designed by Chicago's DeStefano and Partners and is being developed by a venture that includes Guy Gardner. A groundbreaking will be held early next year, Gardner said.

In 1999, the developers brought to City Hall a proposed tower of 700 feet, nearly 300 feet taller than the district's tallest buildings, the neo-Gothic Willoughby Tower at 8 S. Michigan and the beehive-topped Britannica Centre at 310 S. Michigan.

City planners asked the developers to cut its height to the 425-foot ceiling suggested by the guidelines. Simultaneously, neighbors in the building to the north got the developers to trim about 25 feet off the building's north side, making way for a shaft that will let light and air into their apartments. The developers, not surprisingly, were intent on maximizing square footage and profit.

The design that emerged from these colliding forces is hardly a terrible building, but it's a classic case of what might be called "not quite" architecture.

While the terra cotta-clad base nicely continues the row's prevailing 280-foot height, it isn't quite wide enough to give the tower the muscular oomph of the streetwall's best buildings. The glassy top, meanwhile, isn't quite tall enough to look like a true tower. It's part slab, part whiskey bottle, with just enough towerlike elements to make it visually palatable. The result would have been better if city planners had shown greater flexibility on the issue of height, trading more floors for better proportions and a more elegant skyline.

Still, greater height is hardly a panacea, as seen by the contrast between the two ends of the streetwall, the Heritage at Millennium Park and the Columbian.

Despite its off-Michigan location, one block behind the row at the corner of Randolph and Wabash Avenue, the Heritage has a major presence in the row. Designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz and developed by a joint venture that includes Mesa Development, it is due to open next year. Its outlines, though, already are evident: A base steps up from an older building to the south and turns into a slender, 620-foot tower.

Not a meek building

With its glass and painted concrete exterior, the skyscraper makes a strikingly effective transition between the historic row and the much-taller modern towers along Randolph, including the slice-topped Smurfit-Stone Building. Yet it is no meek background building. Its curves strike up a conversation with the explosive metal shells of Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park. The design works not only as an object but also as part of a larger whole.

At the Columbian, which will rise at the high-profile corner of Michigan and Roosevelt Road, the outcome seems likely to be very different.

Developed by Allison Davis and designed by DeStefano and Partners, the 493-foot, brick-faced tower is in the final stages of city review. Its design seeks to evoke the slim, setback skyscrapers of the 1920s and to resemble, as the architects assert, a corner post that punctuates the end of a fence.

While the design is a cut above the brute concrete slabs of River North, its setbacks creating a sculptural profile, it is nonetheless draped in the sort of nostalgic cloak that seems to appeal to aging Baby Boomers returning to the city from the suburbs.

This is generic traditionalism, better suited to the banal towers of Central Station than to the extraordinary architecture of the streetwall. While the tower correctly bookends the streetwall, it does so with considerably less panache than the Heritage.

Yet even if the guidelines had affected the Columbian -- city planners did not include the block between 11th Street and Roosevelt in the district because the block had too few historic buildings -- it is hard to see how the guidelines would have significantly improved the skyscraper. For all the influence that planning tools have, this tower reminds us there are limits to their impact: It is impossible to legislate good design.

There are other lessons to be learned from these cases, although the lessons seem contradictory: The guidelines at once need to be loosened and tightened.

Heading off the monsters

To be sure, the guidelines have done exactly what they were supposed to do, preventing monstrously tall towers from invading the district.

Yet as the Heritage and 1000 S. Michigan cases show, it may make sense for planners to raise the height ceiling, letting new residential towers go as high as 550 or 600 feet. A little jaggedness -- as opposed to a uniform height cap -- can only enrich the skyline, as Chicago architect Ben Weese, a member of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, suggests: "If we lop 'em off, it's like mowing the grass too short."

Why not extend this flexibility across stylistic boundaries? The Heritage shows that large-scale contemporary designs can work in the streetwall, not just tiny modern buildings like Spertus.

Now for the tightening up: For the guidelines to be meaningful, they should be applied not only across the entire row but also, perhaps, behind it. As good as the Heritage is, the risk is that future towers along Wabash will create an ugly backdrop to the streetwall. Think of the way the hulking red CNA high-rise at 333 S. Wabash looms above the wall, like the blockhead who wrecks the class portrait.

While city officials including Planning and Development Commissioner Denise Casalino defend what they've done so far, they leave the door open to change.

That's welcome news because, while good design cannot be legislated, bad rules can get in the way. And good design, however hard it is to define, is what Chicago's showcase streetwall richly deserves.

You'll know it when you see it.

- - -

The Michigan Avenue streetwall (New or planned construction is highlighted in red below and shown in detail above.)

1.Columbian

2. 1142 S. Michigan

3. 1130 S. Michigan

4. Grant Park Hotel

5. Columbia College

6. Lightner Building

7. 1000 S. Michigan

8. Karpen-Standard Oil Buildin

9. Crane Co. Building

10. 830 S. Michigan (former YMCA)

11. Johnson Publishing Co.

12. East-West University

13. Essex Inn

14. Chicago Hilton & Towers

15. The Blackstone

16. Columbia College

17. Spertus Institute

18. Spertus Insitute (Future)

19. Harvester Building

20. Congress Hotel Annex

21. Congress Hotel

22. The Auditorium

23. Fine Arts Building

24. Fine Arts Annex

25. Chicago Club

26. McCormick Building

27. Karpen Building

28. Britannica Centre

29. Santa Fe Building

30. Orchestra Hall

31. Borg-Warner Building

32. Peoples Gas Building

33. Municipal Courts Building

34. Illinois Athletic Club

35. Monroe Building

36. University Club

37. The Gage Group

38. Chicago Athletic Association

39. Willoughby Tower

40. Montgomery Ward Building

41. Smith, Gaylord & Cross Building

42. Michigan Boulevard Building

43. Chicago Cultural Center

44. The Heritage at Millennium Park

http://images.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2004-10/14575094.jpg
City panel OKs design for Spertus Institute
A plan to create a distinctly modern building in the city's Michigan Avenue historic district appeared to be sailing toward final passage Thursday. The plan for the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies calls for a 10-story building with a folding, faceted glass facade.
(Handout image of proposed building)
October 8, 2004

Sources: City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development

Chicago Tribune/Keith Claxton

geoff_diamond

October 26th, 2004, 06:40 PM

Okay, what Blair Kamin writes is rarely too far removed from genius; and this article is no different. I do take exception to one thing that he said, however. Although, it is a bit of a double-edged sword. In regards to extending guidelines to the "back-side" of the streetwall (or those structures that would exist on the east side of Wabash Avenue): where should the regulations end? Kamin makes an example out of CNA, claiming that it detracts from the historic streetwall. Unfortunately, I wouldn't say it's entirely accurate to claim that only a building located directly on, or behind, the streetwall has the ability to to influence its appearance. A building as far west as, let's say Dearborn, could easily detract from, or add to, the streetwall if it were big enough (a perfect example would be Bank One Plaza located between Dearborn and Clark). Basically, the question has to become "how far is too far?" If we let the fear of marring the historic streetwall become an overarching theme, don't we end up stifling architectural liberty for the entire eastern half of the Loop? Leave the streetwall to be what it is: encompassing just a street. Not a whole block. Not an entire district.

Just my .02

Steely Dan

October 26th, 2004, 07:59 PM

^ ding, ding, ding, ding, ding..........we have a winner.

those were my exact sentiments regarding that article, geoff, and i couldn't have said it better myself.

geoff_diamond

October 27th, 2004, 12:08 AM

Glad to know I'm not alone in my thinking :)

Just me and tent's .04!

AJphx

October 27th, 2004, 08:43 AM

Also there seems to be some type of activity on Wabash and Pearson, they tore down a small restaurant and the parking lot is now closed.... The land is owned by Loyola, does anyone have any info?
Is that possibly the site of The Clare at Water Tower? They are likely to be getting the site ready for that tower now.

24gotham

October 27th, 2004, 08:07 PM

Glad to know I'm not alone in my thinking :)

Just me and tent's .04!

Make that .06!

I uaually agree with what Blair has to say. He has a real talent for noting complexities within a design that are often not obvious, yet when he brings them up, it is quite clear.

Geoff, I agree that what is on Wabash and everything west of it don't have much bearing on what should or shouldn't be considered impactful on the Mich Ave streetwall, the lone exception to me would be if there were a building the size of the Sears Tower on Wabash, The Sears Tower is such a mamoth building, it would definately need to be considered what the impact would be on the Mich Ave streetwall.
For me, I think that the best vantage point of the streetwall is from the east side of the street, and not in the park. The most impact in my mind is when only the traffic is between you and this massive wall of historic structures, you are far enough away to get a good view of the buildings, yet close enough to feel the weight of them on your line of vision. From that point, there isn't much that is visable from Wabash and beyond.

NWside

October 27th, 2004, 11:35 PM

Is that possibly the site of The Clare at Water Tower? They are likely to be getting the site ready for that tower now.

No , the site for the Clare is across the street from this site in a 2 or 3 story building also owned by Loyola.

RafflesCity

October 29th, 2004, 03:24 AM

Guys why dont u make 1 thread for each worthy project like they do in certain under forums? then u can take pictures from the beginning till the end

The Urban Politician

October 29th, 2004, 03:32 AM

^Raffles, if you could make "Back to Block 37" and "Lakeshore East" threads into stickies that would be great. Besides TT and Waterview Tower, they are easily the most important developments coming up in Chicago right now

The Urban Politician

November 2nd, 2004, 02:35 AM

New construction going on in the city. Pretty nice architecture. Whaddya guys think?

This one on Greenview Ave:

http://www.greenviewpoint.com/images/LincolnAndGreenview481x417.jpg

This one on 400N Orleans:

http://www.400norleans.com/images/Pictures/NewRendering.jpg

Suburbanite

November 2nd, 2004, 03:29 AM

I love the one on Greenview Avenue. It reminds me of Skybridge in a odd way.

geoff_diamond

November 2nd, 2004, 02:54 PM

I love them both! I was very curious as to what was going in at 400 N.

BVictor1

November 2nd, 2004, 03:46 PM

I had to add this here also. I'm transfering it from the Skyscraperpage.com forum. And it's such a supprise to see this new proposal, I had to put it in this thread as well.

http://onemuseumpark.com/

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/500/6525image4.jpg

lazar22b

November 2nd, 2004, 07:59 PM

^^ wow!! How tall will that be?

BVictor1

November 2nd, 2004, 11:40 PM

Well I went down to the Museum Park sales center today to try and find out information about this building. They didn't have all that much to tell. I did put my name down for future information on this building. This building is also known as Grant Park Luxury Tower 1. It will be on Roosevelt Rd. where it intersects with the Merta/IC Tracks.

I did find out that the building is being designed by Pappageorge/Haymes.

I wasn't satisified with the small amount of information that I got, so I called the offices of Pappageorge/Haymes LTD. Architects;). I was told that they want to go as high as possible. They are shooting for about 75-stories, but it could be only 60-stories, which in itself is okay for that area. Right now the building is going through the city planning department.

I was told to call back around the beginning of December, and hopefully they'll know more by then.

On a side note, the long range plan is to extend Grant Park south from Roosevelt Road to 15th Place over the Metra/IC Tracks between Columbus Drive and the Museum Park development.

But like I said, a building between 60-75 stories in that area will be stunning.

The Urban Politician

November 3rd, 2004, 12:23 AM

BVictor, you're like the James Bond of this forum.

Your investigational, reconnaisance work is more appreciated than you could possibly know!

geoff_diamond

November 4th, 2004, 01:10 AM

That is fucking awesome!!! What a beaut!

BVictor1

November 13th, 2004, 05:49 AM

I have a nice little update on The Elysian

-construction should hopefully begin sometime in mid-January

-out of the 93 hotel/condo suites, there are under 10 remaining

-out of about 50 regular condos, about half have been sold

I was able to capture some nice photos of the model. Now mind you this is the older version design, they are supposed to get an updated model. If and when they do so, I will try to get some photos of that one as well. The buildings height hasn't changed, it's still 60 stories and about 702'.

http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A45nu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A47nu0mrj

Close up of entrance
http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E2323683%3C6%3B%3A8%3Aot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A49nu0mrj

Looking up at the main facade.
http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A4%3Bnu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A53nu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A55nu0mrj

Looking down at the rear facade
http://images.snapfish.com/342354%3A723232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2323%3D774%3D%3C23%3D3232774%3B32%3A59nu0mrj

ENJOY!!!!!

mypetrobot

November 13th, 2004, 06:16 AM

i like the old retro cars at the entrance/

geoff_diamond

November 13th, 2004, 06:01 PM

I could take or leave the middle of the building, but, the roof and the base are fantastic. Should make the Fordham and the Pinnacle look like the shitty knock-offs that they are.

BVictor1

November 13th, 2004, 08:46 PM

I actually like the Fordham. I like it better than the Pinnacle.

geoff_diamond

November 14th, 2004, 04:39 PM

Truth be told, I don't mind either of them :). But, I'm also always encouraging my female friends to buy knock-off handbags because I can't tell the difference :)

I'm just saying... these two are knock-offs... and not great ones.

The Urban Politician

November 15th, 2004, 04:41 AM

BVictor1

November 16th, 2004, 05:51 PM

One thing I love about Chicago is exactly what I and many others complain about. It is relatively conservative in its highrise architecture (although that has dramatically changed recently). Chicago is one of the few cities in the world that still builds classy, art-deco style skyscrapers (although many are bland and weak, some are gorgeous like 840 N Lakeshore Dr. and the new Elysian). This type of skyscraper will NEVER be seen in Hong Kong, Shanghai, LA, or Miami. Yet at the same time, Chicago recognizes the need to be innovative by also building very modern looking highrises (the new Spertus Institute, Skybridge, newer developments in LSE, etc etc etc)

I totally agree with you. We have such a wonderful mixture of every type of style of architecture, and to this day we build all different kinds. Some certainly are better than others.

Anyway here is a rendering of Museum Pointe
http://images.snapfish.com/3423852%3B23232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E232367457%3B695ot1lsi

It's going to be constructed on the southwest corner of 16th and Prairie Avenue. They should start construction on this building before years end.
This rendering in fact is old, they have modified this building a bit. They have removed those vetical bands of dark brick and it's been replaced with glass. So now for the most part the building is all glass except for the base, which remains as about the same as you see.

geoff_diamond

November 16th, 2004, 11:58 PM

Too bad... I like the swaths of color; albeit I'd rather see painted cement than brick.

HowardL

November 17th, 2004, 06:55 AM

OK, I'm going to do one of those things, which I absolutely hate, which is to post some random observation about a project and not have one lick of evidence or picture or url to back it up.

. . . but today I was at the Mart and noticed a sign with rendering on the southeast corner of Kinzie and Wells touting a new development. Looked to be around 9 or so stories, but architecturally interesting. Very glassy, with some angles and facets and what-not. It had a fairly significant retail component. Named something Sterling or Sterling something.

Anybody in the gig heard about this?

PS. It's that rickety lot directly north of the old Helene Curtis HQ.

geoff_diamond

November 18th, 2004, 07:10 AM

Hrmm... no clue here. I'll have to check it out next time I'm over that way.

The Urban Politician

November 26th, 2004, 05:26 PM

Hey guys, I thought I would share some renderings of a few new construction projects going up in Chicago as well as some updates about them. I figured why not, what else to do on a lazy morning when I have the day off.. :)

Lakeside Tower and Michigan Avenue Tower as well as some updates below. What do you guys think? How far along is Lakeside Tower? I like LST's design because it has that diagonal corner site, and in the rear (facing an alley) it has a smalled walled-off community space.

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionTextBlocks/179129.gif

Below is one of my favorite developments downtown. We have never really discussed it much, but I love the facade that emphasizes the corner of State and Archer streets! I also love how it introduces pedestrians down Archer street into Dearborn St in the south loop. Retail on the ground floor is key here. My only complaint--this complex should all be 6-8 rather than 4 storeys tall.

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionTextBlocks/179131.gif

The article says that 740 Fulton is still "planned". Is it? I thought that it was u/c or nearly completed by now. Anybody know?

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionTextBlocks/179132.gif

I like this one, too. Chicago's boom is FAR from just being downtown, but is extensive in the hoods. Does anybody know much about the progress of this development in Logan Square?

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionZooms/492080.jpg

Chase Park Commons. This picture does not show us a whole lot, perhaps somebody else has better renderings. What I like about this, though, is that this and Rainbo Village will add to North Clark St's streetscape beautifully, because they both have streetfront commercial space. Imagine the ground floor of this entire building lined with boutiques, coffee shops, record stores, restaurants and pubs---ahhhh.... (wishful thinking--more realistically? How about Walgreen's or Best Buy)

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionZooms/492079.jpg

Last one. Another new construction loft. The west loop just has this brick/midrise character to it that can't be beat. One of my favorite hoods

http://newspaperads.suntimes.com/p2_images/100036/SS/10565/SectionTextBlocks/179133.gif

That's all, folks. Happy (day after) Thanksgiving!

geoff_diamond

November 27th, 2004, 07:03 PM

Pictures aren't working :(

The Urban Politician

November 27th, 2004, 07:35 PM

^Actually, Geoff, now I can't see them. Hmm.... they were working just this morning. I posted the same pics under "projects and construction" in SSP, under "everything over 300 feet" superthread. It should still be working there..

The Urban Politician

November 28th, 2004, 02:06 AM

Look again. The pics are working now :)

The Urban Politician

November 28th, 2004, 04:08 PM

Developer sought for Jahn building

By Jeanette Almada
Special to the Tribune
Published November 28, 2004

City officials are looking for a residential developer who can step into a mixed-income housing project slated for the Near North Side and designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn.

The developer will build 60 units of mixed-income housing on a triangular parcel at 454-68 W. Division St. and at 1200-30 N. Clybourn Ave.

Jahn, of Chicago-based Murphy/Jahn, has designed a five-story, 100-unit single room occupancy building that will stand just to the north of the Division/Clybourn development site. Construction will begin in spring on the SRO, being built by Lakefront Supportive Housing, formerly known as Lakefront SRO.

Jahn is a partner in developing the SRO building and has agreed to design the mixed-income building as well.

"It is a prominent corner and the developer who ends up building this portion of the larger project will have a chance to create a new focal point for the entire area, to change the face and atmosphere of that corner for the surrounding neighborhood," said Pete Scales, spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development.

"We want a cohesive look that will extend that modern design to the corner," Scales said.

The Planning Department is asking developers simply to submit their qualifications for the project with a development proposal to follow later, according to Scales.

"We want someone with experience in doing mixed-income housing, who can partner with Lakefront Housing and the architect," Scales said.

"Once we get qualifications from all interested developers, three or four of those developers will be selected to present their ideas to city planners and to the Lakefront Supportive Housing and Murphy/Jahn partnership, " Scales said.

No more than half of the units in the mixed-income building will be market-rate apartments or condominiums, according to Benet Haller, Planning Department project manager.

Thirty percent of the building's units will be leased as replacement housing for public housing tenants and 20 percent will be leased or sold affordably to moderate-income buyers or renters, Haller said.

"Most likely the developer will buy the site at a discount," Scales said.

Developers may attend a conference Thursday, Dec. 9, at City Hall Room 1003A. Responses to the city's request for qualifications are due to the Planning Department by Jan. 31.

24gotham

November 28th, 2004, 07:14 PM

I think something is up with picture linking, I keep coming up on threads where I can't see the pics, several of which I have seen the pics previously.
Any ideas?

geoff_diamond

November 29th, 2004, 01:49 AM

Ooh, some of those are really nice. I've always liked 740 W. Fulton... but, this is the first I've seen of 950 Monroe (and I give it two very big thumbs up).

At any rate... so much for 50 E. Chestnut groundbreaking! I was sure that's what was going on, but, in reality, it turned out to be the only thing worse than a Walgreens:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/50echestnut_11280401.jpg

geoff_diamond

November 30th, 2004, 07:52 AM

And may the onslaught of phone-pictures continue! So, I'm walking down Wells tonight (just east of the Mart) and I stumbled across this billboard - which I had never seen before. I tried going to Marc Realty's web site, and there's nothing about the project. I tried going to Sterling Bay's web site... and... well, they don't have one :). The rendering is interesting enough to garner my attention... but, I'll withold judgement/excitement until we find out more about the project. I was able to find an article that explained some of the situation on Globe St... so... enjoy :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/325nwells_11290401.jpg

Helene Curtis Condos Get First Buyer
By Mark Ruda
Last updated: November 5, 2004 07:28am

CHICAGO-The former Helene Curtis headquarters building at 325 N. Wells St. is being converted into commercial condominiums by Sterling Bay Cos. and Marc Realty. A joint venture formed by the two companies acquired the 150,191-sf building along the Chicago River in April for $6.8 million, according to property records., and a 15,000-sf lot next door at 161 W. Kinzie St., leased to General Parking Management, for $3 million.
Chicago School of Professional Psychology was the first to buy into the commercial condo project, recently claiming 57,000 sf on four floors and relocating from 47 W. Van Buren St. The joint venture, which is doing the conversion with $17 million in loans from Wachovia Bank and First American Bank, is selling the remaining space in the 11-story building to office and retail users, hoping to have the entire building sold or leased by the end of the year.

“Although Chicago definitely lags behind other large cities in the development of commercial condominium ownership for office and retail properties, over the last five years, we have noticed the beginnings of a definite trend,” says Sterling Bay Cos. principal Andy Gloor. “Although this project is the first commercial condo conversion for Sterling Bay, we felt the timing was right to introduce the commercial condo concept.”

Trammell Crow Co. senior vice president Kenneth J. Szady represented a private entity controlled by Lehman Brothers in the sale of the building. Transwestern Commercial Services executive vice president Phil Utigard and senior vice president Mitchell Loveman represented Chicago School of Professional Psychology in its purchase. Loveman is now a vice president with Colliers Bennett & Kahnweiler Inc.

BVictor1

November 30th, 2004, 11:39 PM

Did you call the phone number on the billboard?

The Urban Politician

December 1st, 2004, 01:31 AM

Wow, GD, I'd love to hear anything more you find out about that development...

Here's another bit of news. HA HA stupid ass NIMBY's you can kiss my ass! The NIMBY's didn't like this development because it had too much density and not enough parking:

DePaul dorm 'a done deal'

By Alby Gallun
A Lincoln Park residents group has failed in its campaign to block a planned 580-bed student dormitory for DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus.
The City Council’s Zoning Committee on Nov. 23 unanimously approved the $60-million dorm on the site of the Coyne American Institute Inc. at 1215 W. Fullerton Ave.

continued below

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Proposed by Chicago-based developer Smithfield Properties LLC and designed by Chicago-based Antunovich Associates, the glass-and-steel building has drawn opposition from the Sheffield Neighborhood Assn., an influential residents group that says the project is too big and modern and lacks adequate parking (Crain’s, Nov. 22).
Smithfield made some concessions to the project’s opponents, including reducing the number of beds from 617 to 580, but several neighbors still showed up at the zoning committee meeting to voice their disapproval.

“It’s just a shame,” said Don Higgins, the group’s president, said of the vote. “This situation is certainly not going to help the relationship” between DePaul and it’s neighbors.

A Smithfield spokesman declined to comment. Alderman Theodore Matlak (32nd), whose ward includes the proposed development, effectively giving him control over its fate, wasn’t available for comment.

DePaul's student housing needs are growing as is evolves from a commuter to residential school.

"We have less space than we have demand for," a DePaul spokeswoman said. "We're glad (the project) passed, but it's disappointing that we weren't able to come to an agreement with our neighbors."

The full City Council must still vote on the proposal, but that’s just a formality, said Mr. Higgins, calling the project “a done deal.”

geoff_diamond

December 1st, 2004, 04:42 AM

nope Bvic... being Inspector Gadget is your thing. I was hoping you'd give Andy a call :)

TUP - I agree... fuck the nimbys. If they always got what they wanted, Chicago would still be an industrial wasteland! At any rate, how tall is this proposed dorm? And, why the hell do they think they need parking? I would presume that most students arrive at an urban campus, such as DePaul's, free of automobiles. Of all the kids that I know that live in the dorms at UIC, I can't think of one that has a car with them.

BVictor1

December 1st, 2004, 07:17 AM

I thought this was somewhat interesting as well.

Homeless shelter may be on move
Tigerman agrees to design new Pacific Garden

By Ana Beatriz Cholo
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 30, 2004

After almost five years of talks with city and school officials, Chicago's oldest and largest homeless shelter might be getting a new home on the corner of 14th Place and Canal Street in a state-of-the art building designed by one of the city's renowned architects.

The Pacific Garden Mission, which occupies a nondescript building at 646 S. State St., next to Jones College Prep High School, would move to a new building designed by Stanley Tigerman with a 2-story atrium and a huge greenhouse on the third floor that would provide jobs and food for residents.

But the deal for a new building has not been completed, officials at the mission and the Chicago Public Schools stressed. Also unfinished is the sale of the mission's State Street property, which the school district wants in order to put up a new building for Jones College Prep.

Peter Cunningham, a schools spokesman, said the district is "committed to making [the deal] work," but "it's not fully baked yet.

"We have to buy [the land], get it rezoned and then Pacific Garden has to get all the financing [for the new building] in place," Cunningham said.

But the fact that both sides have agreed on a site for the mission's new building and a design for it has been drawn up is reason for optimism, officials said

"We are going through the finances of how this is going to happen," mission attorney Thomas Johnson said, adding that the amount the mission gets from the city for its building is an important factor. "The site has been the stumbling block. Now we have a site. That is a major, major step in the right direction."

Johnson said he is optimistic the deal will be completed by the end of the year.

Pacific Garden Mission has been a fixture in the city for 127 years. With a sign outside the building proclaiming "Jesus Saves," up to 1,000 men a day get fed and seek shelter at the facility during the winter.

Tigerman said he was drawn to the shelter's mission and the people who work there.

"I prefer doing work for people who need me," Tigerman said. "How many suburban villas for princes and princesses are you expected to design before you go berserk? I am much, much, much more interested in providing architectural services for those most in need, and this is one of those circumstances."

The mission also would sell another building it owns at Grand Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway that houses homeless women and children, mission President David McCarrell said. They would be housed in the new building, he said.

Chicago Public Schools has a direct interest in the mission's plans because of Jones, which has been transformed from a 2-year technical high school into a premier selective-enrollment school for students around the city. District officials have been pushing for the South Loop property since 1999.

Johnson said the mission is not opposed to leaving its current building. But the mission's leaders are intent on keeping their shelter in the downtown area because that's where homeless people feel most comfortable and where the mission could continue to get help from local businesses such as restaurants, Johnson said.

The city has proposed a variety of sites for the mission. But in each case, there was opposition--from neighbors, an alderman or nearby businesses. A year ago, city attorneys filed a lawsuit to condemn the mission in what some say was an effort to speed up the process of expanding the high school next door.

Attorneys for the shelter said they tried to work with the city even as they were being sued.

The turning point in negotiations was reached in August when city officials found the land at 14th and Canal, now occupied by a closed auto emissions-testing facility, for sale. The area, located between the Chicago River and Dan Ryan Expressway, is primarily industrial.

At the Nov. 17 Board of Education meeting, the board authorized the school district to begin negotiations on the purchase of the land.

The $20 million expansion of Jones includes a much-needed library, fitness center and classrooms. The library now is housed in the counseling office and counselors must work out of a hallway.

The lack of space has put a strain on students in a variety of ways, Principal Donald Fraynd said.

Athletes must practice at a closed high school that is a 20-minute ride away. The commute not only causes transportation problems, it works against building school spirit, Fraynd said.

"We don't have very many fans at games," he said.

Local School Council Chairman Walter Paas found out about the new proposed site Monday.

"I am just really relieved that they are finally coming to a resolution now," Paas said.

At a public meeting scheduled for Dec. 9 at Jones College Prep, 606 S. State St., Tigerman will present his design plans for the new shelter and take questions.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

BVictor1

December 3rd, 2004, 01:59 AM

Multifamily Sales Volume Heads for Record
By Mark Ruda
Last updated: December 1, 2004 06:26pm

CHICAGO-Sales volume for larger multifamily rental buildings is on pace to set a record this year, according to Appraisal Research Counselors. The appraisal firm reports $379 million in sales through the third quarter, which would be second only to 2000 if no other deals closed.
However, the firm’s most recent “Downtown Chicago Residential Benchmark Report” notes two buildings, 440 N. Wabash Ave. and 222 N. Columbus Dr., are under contract for an estimated $242 million combined, while six more buildings are on the market. At the same time, capitalization rates are rivaling 2000, at 6.69%, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, with the properties on the market being offered at an average cap rate of 5.30%.

“There continues to be plenty of cash chasing apartments,” according to the report co-authored by vice presidents John R. Jaeger and Gail L. Lissner. They add those holding the cash continue to be familiar players.

“Brokers report that private investors still dominate the market, with pre-emptive bids on buildings before they officially hit the market,” according to the report. “The market continues to be a battleground between private investors and condominium converters.”

While the private investors have dominated the Downtown and North Side markets, Appraisal Research Counselors report pension funds have been aggressive in the suburbs. “We expect the condominium converter to play a dominant role in the next three to six transactions occurring in the Downtown market,” according to the report.

With the Downtown and North Side submarkets becoming overheated, the Hyde Park and South Shore communities along the lakefront have become more popular, brokers tell Appraisal Research Counselors.

BVictor1

December 3rd, 2004, 04:46 PM

Soldier Field may remain a landmark

By Hal Dardick, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune reporter Gary Washburn contributed to this report
Published December 3, 2004

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/thumbnails/poll/2004-09/14382723.jpg

Until this week, an effort was moving forward to remove Soldier Field from the nation's most prestigious list of historic sites. But a surprise reversal has put the movement back at Square One, to the dismay of architectural preservationists.

Meeting in Florida, the National Park System Advisory Board on Tuesday returned to its Landmarks Committee a recommendation to strip Soldier Field of its National Historic Landmark designation.

The 12-member advisory board asked the committee to reconsider its recommendation, a request board chairman Douglas Wheeler characterized as unusual. "Typically, we adhere pretty religiously to the recommendation of the committee," he said.

Wheeler, a Washington lawyer, said the recommendation to remove Soldier Field from the list was based on the stadium's losing its "architectural integrity" as a result of the 2003 renovation.

But Soldier Field was named a landmark in 1987 as a result of the historic events that took place there, not its architecture, Wheeler said, so it's inconsistent to remove Soldier Field from the list based on a change in architecture.

This September, the Landmarks Committee unanimously approved removing the landmark designation.

Had the recommendation been approved, it would have been sent to U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton for a final decision.

David Bahlman, president of the non-profit Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, called the board's rationale outrageous.

"To say that a structure is designated a landmark simply on an historical basis is dead wrong," said Bahlman. "It's a blatantly erroneous rationale for not de-designating it. It doesn't make any sense."

Bahlman suggested Mayor Richard Daley's administration went outside routine National Park Service channels to oppose taking Soldier Field off the landmark list, which includes fewer than 3,000 sites in the United States.

But spokesmen for the city and the Park District said there was no effort to lobby President Bush on the subject.

A $660 million renovation of Soldier Field, which Bahlman's group unsuccessfully tried to block in court, was completed in September 2003.

Under a plan backed by Daley, most of the stadium's interior was razed, and a contemporary arena some critics have compared to a flying saucer was set inside its classical colonnades and outside wall.

In late 2000, before the renovation was approved, National Park Service officials said they would remove landmark status if the renovation went ahead. Former Park District Supt. David Doig defended the plan, noting it would preserve the colonnades.

After the project was completed, the National Park Service conducted a study and recommended removing landmark status. Its report stated Soldier Field "no longer retains its historic integrity," not architectural integrity as Wheeler contended.

The renovation resulted "in Soldier Field no longer retaining its sense of past time and place," the report stated. "The new stadium destroys the property's expression of the aesthetic and historic sense of a particular time period, the 1920s and 1930s."

Writers of the original 1985 application for landmark status noted the structure in the 1920s and '30s was the venue for significant events, as Wheeler noted. However, most of the application recounts the architectural history and details of Soldier Field, called Municipal Grant Park Stadium when it opened in 1924.

Chicago Park District Supt. Timothy Mitchell, in a September letter to the advisory board, said the renovation preserves the colonnades, which the original landmark application "identified as the stadium's`most distinctive architectural feature.'"

Carol Brown, associate director of the city's Washington office, also recently opposed removing the designation, according to federal documents.

Carol Ahlgren, a National Park Service architectural historian who co-wrote the recommendation to remove landmark status, said Soldier Field would not have been considered for landmark status in 1987 if its architectural integrity had not been intact. "You cannot be anywhere in the facility now and see what it looked like historically," she said. "Does it have the appearance and qualities that made it a National Historic Landmark in 1987? The answer is `no, it does not.'"

Bahlman said people inside the stadium today would have no sense of how it felt in the 1920s and '30s. "You cannot see the colonnades," he said. "It no longer retains its historic integrity because its architecture has been obliterated."

Landmark Committee Chairman Larry Rivers of Texas A&M University said his committee would ask National Park Service staff to revisit the landmark issue. The committee will reconsider the issue when it meets in February or March.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/thumbnails/story/2003-09/9496502.jpg

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602590.jpg
In 2002, with its old seating bowl gutted, Soldier Field temporarily is restored to its 1920s outline.
(Tribune photo by David Klobucar)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602724.jpg
Instead of a single seating bowl, there are tiers of seats on each side of the field, with an overhanging four-level stack of luxury suites on the east side.
(Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602783.jpg
Soldier Field’s 133 luxury suites have tilted floor-to-ceiling glass walls that provide excellent views of the field and the skyline.
(Tribune photo by Jose M. Osorio)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602595.jpg
The stadium is the only one in pro football that places all the luxury suites and club seats on one side of the field.
(Tribune photo by Chris Walker)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602603.jpg
The seating bowl at Soldier Field sits inside the historic stadium’s classical colonnades.
(Tribune photo by Chris Walker)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602605.jpg
The asymmetrical seating bowl provides fans an intimate view of the game.
(Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602612.jpg
Glass-walled concourses leading to the luxury suites provide close-up views of the stadium’s colonnades.
(Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602660.jpg
Soldier Field’s east side features a curving green glass wall.
(Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2003-09/9602914.jpg
The north side of Soldier Field at dusk.
(Tribune photo by Chris Walker)

The Urban Politician

December 4th, 2004, 03:42 AM

Screw those assholes. Soldier field looks just fine, and it'll be in a textbook of architecture in 50+ years, guaranteed. Perhaps not because of its beauty, but because of the innovativeness of juxtaposing new and old in an era that will some day be known for urban revitalization and the great conflicts between preservation and progress

STR

December 4th, 2004, 05:16 AM

That field is fugly.

BVictor1

December 4th, 2004, 04:41 PM

MODEL NOTES
Old is new again on Michigan Avenue

Compiled by Seka Palikuca
Published December 4, 2004

Sales are under way and two furnished models are open at Metropolitan Tower on the Park, a 30-story office building being converted into 244 residences at 310 S. Michigan Ave.

Located on the building's 12th floor, the models include a two-bedroom, 1,202-square-foot Burnham residence and a three-bedroom, 1,932-square-foot Avenue design.

The condo designs have one to three bedrooms with up to 1,932 square feet. The two-, three- and four-bedroom Buckingham plans have up to 4,171 square feet, while the full-floor Millennium Penthouses have up to 4,000 square feet with private elevators and 360-degree views.

Residences have electronic pass-key entry, high-speed Internet access, and new plumbing, electrical and sprinkler systems. Prices start in the low $300,000s.

Building amenities include a 24-hour doorman, fitness center, roof deck, furnished guest suites, an event room and enclosed parking. The lobby preserves original cream-colored moldings, marble floors and brass elevator doors. The building offers views of Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain and Millennium Park.

Metropolitan Properties of Chicago LLC is redeveloping the 80-year-old structure, part of the landmark Historic Michigan Avenue District. The sales center is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 312-922-1310, or visit www.TheMetropolitanTower.com.

BVictor1

December 4th, 2004, 04:50 PM

Architects Jahn, Calatrava honored

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published December 3, 2004

Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava, whose lyrical structures range from the Milwaukee Art Museum to the Olympic Stadium in Athens, was named by the American Institute of Architects on Thursday as the winner of the Gold Medal, the institute's highest individual honor. The AIA also named the Chicago architectural firm of Murphy/Jahn, led by Helmut Jahn, as the recipient of its Architecture Firm Award, the top honor bestowed on a firm.

Calatrava--who is also an artist and engineer and is as well-known for his bridges as for his buildings--is the 61st recipient of the Gold Medal, joining such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn.

His 3-year-old expansion of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which features a sunshade that opens like the wings of a bird, has drawn thousands of visitors from Chicago and its suburbs. The design, Calatrava's first American building, anticipates the architect's planned $2 billion World Trade Center transportation hub. Its aboveground portion will resemble a great bird that alighted on a plaza.

"I will try to be at the level of this honor for the rest of my career," Calatrava said after the AIA notified him Thursday. Calatrava is based in Zurich and has offices in New York City.

The Gold Medal recognizes an individual whose body of work has had an enduring impact on the theory and practice of architecture. Indeed, Calatrava's buildings and bridges have spawned numerous imitators, a trend wags have labeled the "Cala-trivialization" of design.

The award going to Murphy/Jahn recognizes a practice that has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

The firm's recent works, including the State Street Village dormitories at the Illinois Institute of Technology, represent a sleek synthesis of architecture and engineering--a major shift from such postmodern 1980s projects as the controversial James R. Thompson Center. The firm's current European buildings combine an aesthetic of transparency with energy-saving "green" features and bold, ever-shifting nighttime lighting.

"Since we are treading on new ground in America, this is a very good sign and signal," Jahn said in a telephone interview. "It will make us work even harder."

Both the Gold Medal and the Architecture Firm Award will be presented on Feb. 11 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Millions of Americans watching the Olympics last summer saw the soaring roof Calatrava designed for the Olympic Stadium--two huge arches at either side of the stadium.

Chicagoans, however, lost a chance to experience Calatrava's magic in their city when the architect declined to enter the city's current design competition for Lake Shore Drive pedestrian bridges. Calatrava reportedly was upset that Mayor Richard Daley had shelved his plan for pedestrian bridges leading from Buckingham Fountain to the shoreline.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

BVictor1

December 5th, 2004, 04:45 PM

ARCHITECTURE

`Visions' asks challenging questions about the city

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published December 5, 2004

The Art Institute of Chicago's provocative but unwieldy new exhibition, "Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions," is a lot like one of those high school science fairs where all the smart kids in the class do a project of their own choosing. Some are brilliant, others middling. You learn something and it's fun, but it's not really supposed to hang together. A museum exhibition, on the other hand, has to meet a higher standard. At the end of this one, you come out dazzled by some of the parts, but wondering what the whole is all about.

The museum asked 10 Chicago architects, five men and five women, to identify a significant issue for the city's future and design a "spatial commentary" on that issue. The commentaries are on subjects ranging from pure aesthetics to how power shapes The City That Doesn't Always Work. In one, thousands of baseball cards form a screenlike wall, part of a display that suggests ways to bring life to the parking lot desert around U.S. Cellular Field. In another, a video spoofs the heavy-handedness of Mayor Richard M. Daley's middle-of-the-night shutdown of Meigs Field. It shows a giant hand dispatching a tiny airplane with the flick of a finger.

Unconventional

This is clearly not a conventional architecture show, with drawings, models and photographs displayed primly along neutral white walls. It empowers architects to both comment on Chicago's future and to make their point by creating whole environments, some of which are more like installation art than architecture. All that reflects the daring, tempestuous spirit of the show's guiding force, Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, the seventysomething design power broker and salon king. The big question is whether this approach has produced some big ideas that might shape the buildings of the future, or, at least, our perceptions of Chicago.

The show, which can be found in the museum's Regenstein Hall, is the third of a trilogy that Tigerman started with the museum's former chief architecture curator, John Zukowsky. The first of the trio, "Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis," set the tone in 1988 with its extravagantly theatrical look at Chicago's past and the hero figures of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnham.

Part 2, "Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923-1993: Reconfiguration of an American Metropolis," was an equally sprawling (and highly critical) look at the city's unheroic present. It appeared in 1993.

Now this show turns an optimistic gaze to the future. A jury consisting of New York architect Henry Cobb, Tigerman, Zukowsky and associate architecture curator Martha Thorne selected the 10 designers, who were culled from a field of 40. The 10 include Tigerman's wife and business partner Margaret McCurry, but, Thorne said, the 10 were selected on the basis of anonymous proposals.

What pops out first is the show's unusual layout. It doesn't take up all of Regenstein Hall or even one side of it. Instead, Tigerman wraps the exhibition, with its bright yellow, gray and black graphics, around the perimeter of the hall. It resembles a hollow square. Another show, about Native American art, fills the middle of the square.

You go straight ahead to enter the Native American art show or to the right or left to start wending your way around "Ten Visions." The arrangement is somewhat confusing, forcing security guards to direct traffic. So why do it?

Architecture as useful art

Tigerman's rationale begins with his idea that architecture is a useful art rather than a fine art. The perimeter gallery, he writes in the press materials about the show, can therefore mediate between the "sacred" space of the museum and the "profane" space of the city around it. While this justification is likely to escape the vast majority of viewers -- it's impossible to see the city from within the windowless hall -- it nonetheless has an underlying soundness. More important, Tigerman's exhibit design is a spatially intoxicating, if not especially innovative, framework.

Each of the 10 commentaries is located in a roomlike pavilion, 21 feet square and 15 feet, 6 inches high. The pavilions are formed by a handsomely bare-bones structural framework, with an open truss slicing through the upper reaches of the rooms, cleaving them in half.

The framework subtly suggests Chicago's checkerboard street grid, its overlay of diagonal streets, and even the way the grid takes on different flavors as it moves from one neighborhood to another. What's more, echoing the earlier shows of the trilogy, the pavilions join to shape grand linear spaces. They make the show bracingly three-dimensional in contrast to the humdrum two-dimensionality of drawings hanging on a wall.

Still, there are problems. The pavilions line opposite sides of the square, with the male architects segregated on one side and the female architects on the other. This division serves little purpose other than to encourage us to engage in a boys-versus-girls parlor game. And there are cloying biblical overtones in the gathering of equal numbers of males and females. Is this the Ark Institute? It would have been better to integrate, rather than isolate, the men and women.

Another problem is the way some of the architects either tweak or ignore Tigerman's exhibition design, which was supposed to reinforce his guiding idea of contrasting "dream" and "nightmare" scenarios for Chicago's future. That creates further confusion and is one the factors that render the exhibition a whole that is less than the sum of its parts.

Even so, some of the parts are dazzling, particularly Joe Valerio's pavilion, which manages to be both chilling and entertaining.

Valerio's "vision" is not a conventional master plan, like Burnham's, which sets out to shape how a city should look. Rather, he takes up the issue of how we see, inviting the viewer into a room of four fragmented aluminum boxes. The four boxes create some delightfully ambiguous spaces. Yet four television monitors interspersed among them show an entirely different view of the pavilion: the bird's-eye perspective of a camera in a corner of the room. It is positioned so that, when the four boxes are seen on the monitors, they appear drearily identical, resembling the stand-alone towers of a lifeless modernist utopia. Here, Valerio makes a powerful commentary against a centralized authority and the way it can quash architecture's lively ambiguity.

Is that a poke at Daley, who has concentrated power to an astonishing degree? It's not clear.

But two other fine pavilions, by Xavier Vendrell and Elva Rubio, do address the kind of development that has occurred under Daley. Vendrell's poignantly contrasts the spread of vapid, suburbanized housing in Chicago with the teeming streets of a dense, truly urban city, one based on shared social spaces rather than private enclaves.

Rubio uses a series of visual devices -- video screens, light boxes -- to hilariously satirize the nexus of power and money that has produced such megaprojects as Millennium Park and Soldier Field. (One video gives us the delicious image of a flying saucer landing on the old stadium.) To her credit, Rubio also shows how the city's power structure might be better used, taking the "greening" of Chicago to new heights, for example.

Also compelling is Katerina Ruedi Ray's take on Chicago's immigrants and the mix of enchantment and alienation they experience in their new city. She makes the museum-goer feel the latter with a supersize image of a child looming over Chicago's Immigration and Naturalization Service building.

Playing the field

Jeanne Gang's essay on urbanizing the lifeless environs of U.S. Cellular Field also works well, with its exquisitely crafted models and its crowd-pleasing wall of baseball cards. (The cards are stapled into triangle-shaped blocks, showing that the weakness of paper can be converted into strength.)

Yet Gang's interest in the craft of building -- the actual making of things -- is the exception in this show rather than the rule. The exhibition tends to be better at commentary than construction.

The pavilion that comes closest to a Burnham-style master plan, Ralph Johnson's, is an exercise in megalomania, proposing an airport in the lake off of Grant Park as part of an expansion of Chicago into Lake Michigan. Lakefront activists fought off this kind of blight long ago. Besides, didn't Daley supposedly close Meigs to keep planes away from Sears Tower and other downtown skyscrapers?

Others delving into the realm of reality have problems of their own. McCurry's pavilion on affordable housing, while offering the commendable idea that such housing need not be bland or ugly, is too crammed with plans from her and three other architects.

There are further disappointments. Doug Garofalo's illustration of the Chicago Metropolis 2020 plan largely consists of earnest designs from students; their text is nearly impossible to read without a magnifying glass. Ron Krueck's minimalist meditation on the rectangle, with its guillotine blade-shaped rectangle suspended above the floor, is more palate cleanser than poetic. Eva Maddox's pavilion on future learning environments is illuminating but lacks tension, resembling a world's fair product display.

What all this adds up to is a mostly intelligent, visually alluring, slightly discombobulated look at where Chicago is headed. Wisely, there has been no attempt to put a straitjacket on the architects, enforcing a single style. Each of them, in effect, has been handed a searchlight. The trouble is, the searchlights point in so many different directions that, despite its isolated moments, the show doesn't have much collective impact. The architects don't congeal into the "Chicago Ten," as the show's graphics imply, evoking the "Chicago Seven" (Tigerman and six others) who in the late 1970s challenged modernist orthodoxy. In that sense, the show represents a missed opportunity.

Still, "Ten Visions" asks challenging questions and for that we should be grateful. Skip it if coherence is your cup of tea. But if you want a few tantalizing peeks into the future -- and some incisive commentary on the present -- it's worth a look.

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"Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions" appears at the Art Institute of Chicago through April 3, 2005.

The Urban Politician

December 6th, 2004, 02:01 AM

I know many of you probably visit skyscrapers.com, but for those of you that don't or haven't for a while, you've got to check these out! Lakeside on the Park is almost done, and it looks great! Sure, its not trend-setting architecture, but it looks so nice. Also, from these pics you can slowly begin to see Central Station starting to fill out. Click below:

http://www.emporis.com/en/il/pc/?id=160716&aid=19&sro=1&yr=2004&mt=11

geoff_diamond

December 6th, 2004, 06:12 PM

BVictor1

December 6th, 2004, 06:36 PM

December 06, 2004

City moves on O'Hare houses
Ready to open talks with homeowners in path of expansion

By Paul Merrion

Increasingly confident of a go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration next year, Chicago is laying the groundwork to start buying homes and businesses in the path of O'Hare International Airport's planned expansion.
The city soon will seek permission from about 700 affected home and business owners to get title checks, appraisals and other preliminaries out of the way. Chicago has budgeted $800 million for land acquisition and noise mitigation.

The city wants to get the land-buying process moving despite a July 2003 federal court order that blocks any purchase of land until the expansion project is approved, except in "hardship" cases — instances in which property owners must sell because of job changes, medical emergencies, retirement or other factors.
Stopping short of closing transactions, the city now aims to start negotiating and finalizing written sales agreements with willing property owners. It can't actually complete deals until the expansion project wins federal approval, which is expected by September.

That date "is now quickly approaching," says Rosemarie Andolino, executive director of the O'Hare Modernization Project. "We want enough time to work with individuals" so the project can break ground as soon as possible.

Word that the city is getting the ball rolling is good news for some Bensenville homeowners, who say they have wanted to sell sooner rather than later but aren't under the kind of pressure that would constitute a hardship.

Tim Taylor, a trade association executive who lives in the path of the planned expansion, says he "absolutely" will volunteer to start the process of selling the city his home, which his family has outgrown. "That would be my best opportunity to get out at a decent price," he says. He thinks trying to sell it on the open market now "would be a wasted effort."

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

However, Chicago's move is already sparking controversy and could bring the city back into court with suburban opponents of O'Hare expansion.

"We're studying options that address those activities, including legal remedies," says Joseph Karaganis, lawyer for Bensenville and Elk Grove Village, which sued to block previous city attempts to buy land for airport expansion.

Mr. Karaganis and other O'Hare expansion critics contend that no land will ever be purchased because the expansion will be rejected for legal, safety and cost-benefit reasons. Federal regulators are taking a hands-off stance on whether the city can at least start the process of acquiring land.

[MOVING AHEAD

"We told both sides, that's an issue to bring up with the court," says an FAA spokesman. "It's not an issue for us to decide one way or another."

Chicago sees no legal reason why it can't start the land acquisition process, short of closing deals. The July 2003 court order is narrowly drawn, stating that Chicago "voluntarily agrees that it will not acquire property" in the two suburbs until the expansion project is approved.

Ultimately, the city is counting on its powers of eminent domain to obtain the 433 acres it needs if the project is approved, but any voluntary sales that can get started now will expedite the process later.

The city intends to use money raised from recent airport bond refinancings to pay for any appraisals and other work done prior to a sale, according to a spokesman for the O'Hare project. Eventually, if the federal government approves the expansion, property acquisition and relocation costs would be eligible for federal reimbursement.

Currently, the court order allows the city to buy properties only in hardship cases, but Bensenville and Elk Grove Village must consent to each deal. A city spokesman says at least 24 homeowners have expressed interest in selling as hardship cases.

Both suburbs strongly objected to a letter the city sent out last month advising property owners that the FAA had recently provided the city guidance on what constitutes a hardship.

"There are no hardship cases," says Craig Johnson, mayor of Elk Grove Village. "It's just a scare tactic. The city is desperate to generate some momentum on a project that's failing."

©2004 by Crain Communications Inc.

BVictor1

December 6th, 2004, 06:44 PM

I am all for Soldier Field's removal from the list! It's a hulking piece of shit now. The sooner we get it off the protected list, the sooner we can knock down the colonnades that have already been destroyed, metaphorically, so dutifully by our favorite Boston architect.

I'm kind of suprised that you fell so strogly sbout Soldier Field. I can understand you not liking the new seating bowl, but the colonnades have been actually improved and enhanced. They are now open to the public for a nice stroll, and if you remember, before those awful skyboxed were physically attached the the eastern colonnade. That was highly unattractive.

BVictor1

December 7th, 2004, 03:05 AM

There is a really bad fire in the LaSalle Bank Building in downtown Chicago. The fire is on the 29th floor. Flames are shooting out of the window.

135 South LaSalle. The building is also known as the Field Building.

Field Building 1238-34
Graham, Anderson, Probst and White
Here's a rendering of the building.
http://www.gapw.com/Fldp1.jpg

http://www.artdecoworld.com/Chicago%20028a%20-%2017042000.GIF

http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Landmarks/images/landmarks/f/field1a.jpg

Here's a link: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/120604_ns_Lasalle_fire.html

BVictor1

December 7th, 2004, 03:30 AM

I pulled this from Channel 7's website.

The fire has been upgraded to a 5-11 fire, that's the worst.

http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wls/wls_120604_fire_spread.jpg

BVictor1

December 7th, 2004, 06:57 AM

Here are a few more images. I pulled these of NBC 5's website.

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976168.jpg

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976155.jpg

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976235.jpg

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976217.jpg

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976254_320X240.jpg

In the early stages there were some people trapped.
http://images.ibsys.com/2004/1207/3976273_320X240.jpg

geoff_diamond

December 7th, 2004, 07:27 AM

Since there's a new thread for fire-talk, I'll get back to the other topic at hand.

bvic - I agree at the colonnades weren't perfect before, but, what has been done to them is nothing short of a travesty! There were certainly more respectful options they could have used to bring the stadium back to glory.

The Urban Politician

December 8th, 2004, 02:25 PM

geoff_diamond

December 8th, 2004, 03:50 PM

I'll try to get down there and take some shots of 21-29 when I get a chance.

geoff_diamond

December 8th, 2004, 04:02 PM

Almost forgot... time for a big update (although, nothing too exciting in this one). We've got a few progress shots on 1 S. Dearborn, Hyatt Center and 111 S. Wacker. Enjoy!

1SD seen looking northeast from BankOne Plaza.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/1sdearborn_12070401.jpg

1SD seen looking east down Madison from Clark.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/1sdearborn_12070402.jpg

111 S. Wacker's west facade.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/111swacker_12070401.jpg

The newly lit lobby space of 111 S. Wacker.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/111swacker_12070402.jpg

A peek at 111 from Franklin and Adams.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/111swacker_12070403.jpg

Another shot of the beautifully lit 111 lobby.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/111swacker_12070404.jpg

Our children are growing so fast! 111 and Hyatt seen shoulder to shoulder, both topped out with interior work well under way.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/111swacker_12070405.jpg

Hyatt seen from Franklin and Adams.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/hyattcenter_12070401.jpg

The Hyatt Center lobby, complete with a Christmas tree already! (looking east across Wacker)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/hyattcenter_12070402.jpg

Another shot of the Hyatt lobby.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/hyattcenter_12070403.jpg

Hyatt seen dominating the Franklin street-wall.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Construction/hyattcenter_12070404.jpg

24gotham

December 9th, 2004, 04:22 PM

Though I'd love to see a new highrise, isn't Jeweler's Row supposed to be a landmarked district? I hope the buildings they plan to tear down aren't beautiful, turn-of-the century gems!

New condo project for S. Wabash Ave
Mesa Development, Walsh Grp in JV

By Alby Gallun
A development joint venture has signed a contract to buy three low-rise buildings on Wabash Avenue’s Jeweler’s Row with plans to tear them down and build a 340- to 350-condominium tower in their place.
Mesa Development LLC and Walsh Group are conducting due diligence on the properties at 21-29 S. Wabash Ave., which are owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, said S.L. van der Zanden, managing director of Newcastle Ltd., the Chicago-based real estate firm hired to sell the properties. He declined to disclose a price.
Walsh, a Chicago-based general contractor, and Mesa, a Chicago-based developer, have teamed up on other projects, most notably the Heritage at Millennium Park, a nearby 356-unit condo tower that recently sold out. Representatives of the firms weren’t immediately available for comment.
By buying the Art Institute properties, the team is doubling up in of the hottest segments of the downtown Chicago market - the so-called New East Side. Spurred by the opening of Millennium Park over the summer, condo sales in the neighborhood have soared this year.

The only really significant building on the east side of Wabash between Madison and Monroe is the Jewelers Bldg (1881-82), by Louis Sullivan, this is one of his earliest works still standing, it is at 15-17 S Wabash, right next to the buildings they want to replace.
That's not to say that the other buildings on the block aren't important, but the developer will probably do what the did on the "Heritage" (God, I hate that name) building, which is to salvage the facades, and build a parking structure behind them. While this isn't my favorite thing, it is better than tearing them completely down, and it also puts the space behind the upperfloor facade's to good use.

Here is a pic
http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/images/landmarks/j/jewelers1a.gif

AJphx

December 11th, 2004, 11:36 AM

Thanks for the update Geoff! I see that 111 has all of its facade up now. Its great to see both 111 and Hyatt with all the glass up and the exteriors pretty much complete!

BVictor1

December 11th, 2004, 04:03 PM

There is a lot of news that we need to catch up on, especially concerning 'One Museum Park' in the Central Station development. Now there was a community meeting held Thursday December 9, 2004 about the project. I am going to transfer the information gathered at the meeting to this forum.

Recognition goes to Marvel 33 for this information. He attended the meeting.

Fellows,

I'm happy to let you know that I attended the "Grant Park Advisory Council meeting" this evening, and I have some really good and exciting news.

There were people representing the city of Chicago, The Park District, the Central Station Development and the Enterprise Company. The main speaker was the man in charge of the Chicago Park District, and before he introduced the developers of Central Station...he talked for a few minutes about the expansion of the beautification in Grant Park, south of Millenium. Speaking of which, he talked about the success that Millenium Park has been for Chicago, and then he went on to explain, how they're adding a skate board park & a doggie park , towards Roosevelt Ave. He also explained how the city and the developers are trying to bring retail and restaurants to the area, to make it a vibrant addition to the city.

The best news I heard coming from the Park District, is that they're finalizing a project on the drawing board, to cover the rail road tracks that are still exposed, south of Congress Parkway. I used to live in 1130 S. Michigan last year on the 19th floor, and although I had a wonderful view of the lake, Grant Park and the Field Museum... I was horrified to see those ugly tracks below my building.

Ok, now lets talk about the issue at hand. The second part of the meeting was a presentation given by the developers of Central Station, in which they announced the construction of One Museum Park. This will be the first one of 4 high-rises on the south wall of the park.
It'll be located in the corner of Roosevelt and Columbus and It will be the tallest of the 4 structures with 65 storeys, and with a height of 720ft. It'll be mainly steel and glass, but they're still deciding what color the glass will be. The building will be resting on a podium shared by another 520ft tall building. Unlike many other residential buildings built in Chicago in the last few years. This podium wont be for parking, it'll be used for condominium space.

They also mentioned that they're still working on the designs of the other 3 buildings, and they already have their heights. 520', 520' and 620'. I got some of this information on my own after the meeting was over and I got to talk to some of the architects of PAPPAGEORGE/HAYMES Ltd. which is the firm who designed the first building.

The second tallest building will be designed by another firm, since they want all 4 buildings to be different, and it'll be located in the opposite corner, on Michigan and Roosevelt. This high-rise will have retail, condos and a hotel. However they don't have any retail commitments yet.
Sales for the One Museum Park will start next month and I got a business card from one of the developers and he agreed to keep me updated in the development of the project.

I just want to add that Mayor Daley has been a huge supporter of this project from the very start, and everything points in the right direction so far. I know 65 storeys is not as good as 75, but it is certainly higher than anything we expected...plus I think the design is very nice.

Here are some pics. Enjoy!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Marino33/Chicago/1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Marino33/Chicago/2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Marino33/Chicago/3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Marino33/Chicago/4.jpg

The Urban Politician

December 11th, 2004, 05:09 PM

Wow, it's great to see SSC back in action! I was getting tired of posting everything at SSP--they just don't get it.. :)

Anyway, thanks for the pics GD--I actually am loving 111 Wacker and Hyatt Center's lobbies--I have always found Wacker Dr a bit of a drag, but those lobbies (along with the Merc Exchange's new lobby) should really add a lot of life to that great new commercial spine.

Also, I am very excited about the new Museum Tower BVictor posted about. Anybody have any thoughts?

BVictor1

December 11th, 2004, 05:23 PM

This rendering was in Fridays edition of the Chicago Sun Times. 12/10/04

One Museum Park
65 Stories
720' (feet)

http://images.snapfish.com/34259%3B2%3B23232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3B48444%3B5ot1lsi

The Urban Politician

December 11th, 2004, 06:09 PM

Damn, I hope that thing gets built

Once the southern and northern portions of Grant Park are framed, and most of the Central Area plan gets completed, as well as the Circle LIne, it will be official--Chicago will be untouchable.

There is no conceivable way I could imagine that tourists and businesses would not flock to Chicago. I mean, give me a break, how could they not?

edsg25

December 12th, 2004, 03:41 AM

In the S-T article, it was mentioned that the Central Station developers wer waiting for the area to be sufficiently developed before going ahead with plans as massive as One Museum Park.

If all this construction takes place (and, let's face it, this has proven to be one prime piece of real estate), there are some interesting implications for the city's skyline.

I'd like to suggest one.

Lake Shore Drive offers two breaktaking views of the downtown skyline along the lakefront: the North Side and the South Side. Both spectacular, the South Side has an advantage the North Side doesn't: an unimpeded view of the Loop. From the north, that view is obstructed by the towers of the city's Near North Side, in its role as the northern portion of the downtown district.

Continued development in the Printers Row/Dearborn Park/Central Station/McCormick Place area will, IMHO, produce a similiar result. The South will be like the North.

That is, I foresee a time when the view coming up LSD from Hyde Park will feature these South Loop communities (in their role as the south anchor for downtown) and much of the present Loop view will fade to the background.

BVictor1

December 12th, 2004, 03:42 AM

Wabash site goes to condo builder

By Thomas A. Corfman
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 8, 2004

Another condominium development is coming to the Loop.

Mesa Development LLC, which is developing the Heritage at Millennium Park luxury condominium tower at Randolph Street and Wabash Avenue, has a nonbinding agreement to acquire a 28,400-square-foot development site two blocks away, sources said.

The site, at 21-29 S. Wabash Ave., is currently owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, which had acquired the properties with an eye toward eventual expansion of its school. Instead, the institute put them up for sale this spring.

Three vacant, nondescript low-rise buildings on the site would be demolished to make way for the development.

One of the buildings once housed Kroch's & Brentano's bookstore, which closed in 1995.

The $165 million, 57-story Heritage was developed by Chicago-based Mesa in a venture that includes Matthew and Daniel Walsh, owners of Chicago-based construction firm Walsh Group.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did you guys hear the news about the developer tearing down some buildings in Jeweler's Row for a new condo highrise?

of course we heard about that project, HowardL and victor both posted articles on it in this very thread earlier this week. as for your concerns about the demolition of the 3 existing buildings, according to the article that victor posted, it doesn't appear that they are architecturally significant. here's a quote from the article:

"Three vacant, nondescript low-rise buildings on the site would be demolished to make way for the development."

Well so everyone will know what "Three vacant, non-descript low-rise buildings are in question", I decided to take shots of them. Now the three buildings aren't necessacarily georgious, but some of the detailing is pretty nice. I also like the cornices on the 3 buildings and the northern most building on the site has nice arched windows.
http://images.snapfish.com/3425%3A45523232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3B4%3A54%3B6%3Bot1lsi

Really nice Chicago-style windows on this one.
http://images.snapfish.com/3425%3A45523232%7Ffp7%3Enu%3D3238%3E868%3E492%3EWSNRCG%3D32327%3A5964%3B44nu0mrj

I hadn't really realized this, but if projects like the Heritage keep happening on Wabash, Grant Park will have a double western wall: The shorter, classical, late 19th early 20th century brick and stone streetwall of Michigan Avenue; and the taller, modern, steel-glass and concrete Wabash Avenue streetwall. Had any of you all thought about it that way??

edsg25

December 12th, 2004, 01:02 PM

that suspicious LaSalle Bank fire? LA's competition with Chicago. LA's desire to pass up Chicago in status. The unfinished work of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. You don't think? I mean, it couldn't be......... Silverlake? Could it?

The Urban Politician

December 12th, 2004, 09:28 PM

I've been waiting for this to start. It's one of my favorite new projects in Chicago (outside of downtown):

CITY REPORT
Construction begins on Roosevelt Square project

By Jeanette Almada
Special to the Tribune
Published December 12, 2004

Following a lengthy community review process, LR Development has begun construction of the first units at Roosevelt Square, the 2,441-unit, mixed-income neighborhood that will replace much of ABLA Homes public housing complex on the Near West Side.

The Chicago Housing Authority, which owns the 166-acre ABLA site, designated LR in December 2002 as the master developer to build mixed-income housing on much of the ABLA complex.

LR's $600 million Roosevelt Square project will be built on land that surrounds the Brooks Homes and Loomis Courts, the only two projects remaining in the ABLA complex, which once consisted of the Jane Addams Homes, Brooks Homes, Loomis Homes and the 15-story Abbot Apartments.

In 2000, the CHA rehabbed the 835-unit complex and reduced the number of units to 329, according to CHA development manager Timothy Veenstra. It will rehab the 126-unit Loomis Courts, he said.

But the former ABLA site is not entirely the source for LR's 135-acre development site. "The city is acquiring a few privately owned parcels that are along Roosevelt Road for our Roosevelt Square site," said Steve Porras, LR vice president and project manager for the Roosevelt Square project.

"The CHA will assign a 99-year lease for the portions of the former ABLA site where we build rental units or condo buildings. They will deed the lots where we build townhouses to us, so that we can sell those townhouses as fee simple, and deed them to townhouse buyers," Porras said.

In its first of six construction phases, LR will build 414 apartments, condominiums and townhouses on 13.2 acres between Blue Island and Racine Avenues and 13th and Arthington Streets, according to Porras.

Once completed, Roosevelt Square will extend from Ashland Avenue to Blue Island and from 15th Street to Cabrini Street.

LR began building 181 apartments in November, in a partnership with Chicago-based Heartland Housing Inc., an affiliate of the Chicago-based non-profit Heartland Alliance. By the time Roosevelt Square is completed, it will have built 1,090 rental apartments.

All of the one- to four-bedroom apartments, with 557 to 1,300 square feet of space, will be leased affordably, according to Porras -- 125 apartments to public housing tenants and 56 to non-public-housing tenants who earn up to 60 percent of the Chicago-area median income, or $45,240 for a family of four.

While public housing tenants will pay a percentage of their income as rent, other tenants will pay $690 to $956 a month, Porras said.

"Non-public housing tenants are already contacting our leasing agent, Related Management, who currently operates out of our office on Hubbard Street," Porras said. He added that Related Management will open an on-site leasing office this winter.

LR is partnering with Addison-based Quest Development Group to build Roosevelt Square's for-sale units, in townhouses and condos in low- and midrise buildings, according to Porras.

The partnership has formed three development entities: RS Homes LLC, building three-flats and six-flats scattered throughout the site; RS Pointe LLC, to build the four-story Delano building with 27 condos at Roosevelt Road and Blue Island; and RS Square LLC to build the five-story, 45-condo Franklin building at Roosevelt and Racine.

The developer will build 233 for-sale units in its first construction phase, according to Porras. Once Roosevelt Square is completed, it will have 1,351 for-sale units.

Porras said 159 of the for-sale units will be sold at market rates. "Thirty-eight townhouses with 1,800 to 2,900 square feet of space will sell for prices that will start in the $430,000 range," Porras said. "Of 121 market-rate condominiums, one-bedroom units with 694 to 840 square feet of space will start in the $230,000s; two-bedroom units with 1,037 to 1,326 square feet will start in the $240,000s; and three-bedroom units with 1,263 to 2,191 square feet will start in the $360,000s."

"Forty-seven of the one-bedroom to three-bedroom condominiums will be priced affordably," Porass said. "Seven will be sold for $100,000 to $135,000 to qualified public housing families who are currently being trained in homeownership. Forty condos will be set aside for sale to families earning 80 percent to 100 percent of [Chicago] area median income [$60,320 to $75,400 for a family of four]," Porras said.

"Twenty-seven condos will be set aside for sale to moderate-income earners [$75,4000 to $90,480 annually for a family of four], and will sell for prices between the $180,000s to $280,000s," Porras said.

LR is marketing the for-sale units from a sales center at Roosevelt and Racine.

Roosevelt Square's first construction phase is being financed with $15.4 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HOPE VI funds and with $2.69 million in low-income housing tax credits, according to Porras.

LR is still negotiating with city officials for $9.7 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds to subsidize construction of the affordable for-sale units in the first construction phase. That TIF subsidy was approved in September by the Community Development Commission, but is yet to be approved by the City Council.

Chicago-based DeStefano + Partners is the master planning architect for the project. Other architects designing portions of the project are Brook Architecture Inc., Urban Works Limited, Smith and Smith Associates Inc. and Macondo Corp., all of Chicago.

geoff_diamond

December 13th, 2004, 04:15 AM

Wow, I missed alot when I was in NY! At any rate... I'm really excited about OMP! I would love to see Grant Park really framed in on all three sides; the north is already a great wall with 1 Pru, Aon, BCBS and all the "New East Side" highrises... the west is, obviously, strongly punctuated with the Michigan Avenue streetwall... now, I'm glad to see that a concerted effort is being made to close off the south. Until now, I've always felt the south end of the park sort of just faded away into the south shore.

The Wabash development is also exciting (although, I'll remain skeptical until we've got more concrete evidence that anything will ever happen with it). As bvic mentioned, I love the idea of the double streetwall of old in front of new along Michigan.

24gotham

December 13th, 2004, 08:39 PM

With regards to the Wabash and Monroe project... While the buildings aren't exceptional, the conservation of the facades should be considered, if nothing else to maintain the streetwall in it's present form. I suspect that the developer will do the same thing to these buildings as they did at the Heritage project, which is to save the facades, and build a parking structure behind them, thereby salvaging the integrity of the sidewalk view. OK, that is at least what I hope.

geoff_diamond

December 13th, 2004, 09:26 PM

I don't see why they wouldn't. Preserving the facades ends up costing about the same as tearing them down and having to replace them. I think what they did with the Heritage was great.

Steely Dan

December 13th, 2004, 09:45 PM

i am positive that it costs significantly more to save a facade, ala the heritage, than it does to just rip down an entire existing structure and start from scratch. i don't have exact figures, but when you consider the lengths that they went to preserve the old facaeds at the heritage site by building that whole temporary steel structure to support the facades while the rest of the buildings were demolished, it's quite apparent to me that facade saving practices actually bring a large cost increase to a project.

geoff_diamond

December 13th, 2004, 11:47 PM

At the same time, you have to remember that they don't need to spend money on materials for a new facade (where material costs are typically the highest). I would guess that these costs almost cancel out.

Steely Dan

December 14th, 2004, 12:00 AM

^ it would be great if that were case, but the extremely complicated and techinical process employed to save an old facade, either by leaving it in situ or by removal and reconstruction, is incredibly labor intensive. the labor required to complete that process would almost always far outweigh the labor and material costs of building a new base facade from scratch.

northsidesoxfan

December 14th, 2004, 12:40 AM

I think that it just has to cost more to save the old facade(s) and integrate them into the new structure. There has to be extra billling to the architects, engineers and laborors. There may even be extra insurance for something like the scaffolding.

However, the more important points may be (1) whether the difference is so large that it could mean the difference between going ahead or not with a development, or (2) whether the added costs of retaining the older facades are recouped because the building becomes more attractive to potential buyers or retailers with the older and more appealing facades in place.

I think the Heritage gives the historic facades more than a mention in their advertisements.

Side note: on Clark street at about 1800 or 1850 north there are three brownstone facades that have been saved while new buildings are built into them. They have been sitting there by themselves for about six months or so. That probably lends some evidence to the idea that old facades add a great deal to the value of, at least, some developments. Another example might be the Ambassador West. All they saved was the "pre-war facade" on that building as it went condo.

Steely Dan

December 14th, 2004, 12:48 AM

^ indeed, there may very well be some additional value in saving an old facade and incorporating it into a new building, but i was talking purely about up front construction costs, and in that case, saving an old facade is a more expensive proposition than simply starting from scratch. it's not SO expensive as to render the option finacially impossible, but it most definitely is a cost increase, and depending on a whole wide range of other factors, it may or may not make sense to go through with that cost increase.

The Urban Politician

December 14th, 2004, 02:57 AM

Some info on the Spertus Institute:

City gives Spertus thumbs up on plans for new facility
Columbia officials express interest in buying the current Spertus location
By Alicia Dorr
City Beat Editor

Courtesy Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
The Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies, 618 S. Michigan Ave., plans to build a new headquarters in the lot next to their existing location. The glass structure, a departure from the historic buildings on South Michigan Avenue the city’s approval.
The row of historic buildings on South Michigan Avenue is about to get a new, contemporary look.

The City of Chicago Plan Commission gave the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies, 618 S. Michigan Ave., the green light on its plans for a new, modern facility. The institute, located just north of Columbia’s South Campus Building, 624 S. Michigan Ave., is set to begin construction on the vacant one-third acre lot next to its existing headquarters in Spring 2005.

The 10-story building, designed by architectural firm Krueck & Sexton, will have a diamondlike glass façade. It will house the institute’s museum, college and library, as well as support space and a family center. The new building will also boast central Chicago’s only kosher deli, and more than 50 percent of its rooftop will be green.

The building will have to meet certain requirements because it is in a city-designated landmark district. As far as the design, however, no changes were made to the proposal given to the commission, according to Pete Scales, spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development.

Now that the plans have been approved, Spertus is working with Krueck & Sexton to fortify the glass structure against weathering. According to Betsy Gomberg, director of institutional outreach for Spertus, the building will be hardened to protect it from outside conditions and to maintain the inside climate for the more than 500,000 historic artifacts.

“The technology will be integrated through every aspect of the building, instead of like other buildings that have to be modified later,” Gomberg said.

Security is also a concern in the post 9/11 era, according to Gomberg. Krueck & Sexton architect Tom Jacobs said that high-performance glass would be used on the building, making it environmentally comfortable, but there are no specifics.

“The building hardening, as a concept, is under investigation, and to what extent is too soon to tell,” Jacobs said.

The building will be almost 120 feet shorter than the around 280 foot ceiling cap for buildings on the landmarked street. It is also basically composed in the same vertical style as the existing architecture in the area, even though the new site is not as wide as the current Spertus building. The lost space will be made up for in the building’s depth. According to Gomberg, the new structure will end up having 40 percent more room.

State-of-the-art construction technology, such as the glass
David Maki/The Chronicle
The Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies will be built on the vacant lot on the south side of Columbia’s Alexandroff Center, 600 S. Michigan Ave. The college is eyeing the existing location for expansion.
hardening, will make the building more efficient, she said. This is a way the building will be different from its historic neighbors, but the basic composition and structure of the building still reflects landmark requirements.

Alice Sinkevitch, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and editor of the AIA Guide to Chicago, said the new design will be good for the street.

“It will benefit the existing historic buildings because it will draw more attention to what’s already there,” Sinkevitch said. “It will really solidify that end of [Michigan Avenue].”

The building will also affect the area, not just the look of the South Michigan Avenue skyline. The institute’s glass design will face Grant Park, which was recently brought up to date with Millennium Park at the north end. The modern style will be a departure from the traditional architecture Grant Park currently faces.

Bob O’Neill, Grant Park Conservancy founder and Grant Park Advisory Council president, said the new building is very important to the park because of its visibility. The response has been enormously positive, he said.

“The impact will be very positive on Grant Park and the area,” O’Neill said. “It’s a modern design integrated with historic elements, which is important because it is very visible.”

O’Neill said the glass front will provide park visitors with the ability to see the institute’s activity, which he said will “integrate it with the community.”

As for the institute’s current location, Gomberg said that they hope the building will stay as an education center. With Spertus moving next door to Columbia’s Alexandroff Campus Center, 600 S. Michigan Ave., the vacancy could be filled by Columbia. Alicia Berg, vice president of campus environment, said that the school is still a potential buyer.

“We never stopped looking at that as an option—we’re still interested,” Berg said.

Berg also said that the design for the new neighboring building will be positive for “a part of Michigan Avenue that needs identity.”

The institute will stay in its current location until the new facility is ready, which is scheduled for completion in 2007. According to Gomberg, the building will cost about $40 million to construct. Spertus recently moved closer to this figure with a gift from the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation, which offered $5 million for the institute to complete a 400-seat auditorium.

Suburbanite

December 14th, 2004, 04:27 AM

That Spertus Institute is going to be a real beauty! I can't wait to see how that looks among all those old fashioned beauties on S. Michigan Ave. :cheers:

edsg25

December 14th, 2004, 12:28 PM

I would love to see Grant Park really framed in on all three sides; the north is already a great wall with 1 Pru, Aon, BCBS and all the "New East Side" highrises... the west is, obviously, strongly punctuated with the Michigan Avenue streetwall... now, I'm glad to see that a concerted effort is being made to close off the south. Until now, I've always felt the south end of the park sort of just faded away into the south shore.

Let's see: three street walls facing Grant Park, north and south playing off of each other symmetrically, and the fourth face being Lake Michigan:

I imagine Daniel Burnham has a big smile on his face as he looks down on us today.

edsg25

December 14th, 2004, 12:31 PM

That Spertus Institute is going to be a real beauty! I can't wait to see how that looks among all those old fashioned beauties on S. Michigan Ave. :cheers:

What are the plans for the original building? Spertus is planning a move, not an expansion. The original is hardly a streetwall classic, but I assume it is protected. Anybody know what's what on this?

BVictor1

December 14th, 2004, 04:32 PM

What are the plans for the original building? Spertus is planning a move, not an expansion. The original is hardly a streetwall classic, but I assume it is protected. Anybody know what's what on this?

It would have been a streetwall classic if the facade havdn't been altered. It would be nice if they restored the facade back to its original condition.

edsg25

December 14th, 2004, 11:28 PM

It would have been a streetwall classic if the facade havdn't been altered. It would be nice if they restored the facade back to its original condition.

I had no idea that there was an original facade...so, you're right. that had to be an improvement.

I hope that the same (original facade) isn't true for a neighbor of Spertus...and I'm talking about the ugliest bldg down the entire streetwall, that being Johnson Publishing.

The Urban Politician

December 14th, 2004, 11:38 PM

The Urban Politician

December 15th, 2004, 02:31 AM

Even though it was already announced by BVictor, skyscrapers.com just started posting pics of the Regatta's construction. NOW it is official :)

geoff_diamond

December 15th, 2004, 03:21 AM

Great post TUP!

See? People do read them :)

btw - you should all be watcing UIC-Duke on espn2 right now! Go Flames!!!

The Urban Politician

December 15th, 2004, 11:21 PM

High-rise hotels in view for Wacker Dr. parcels

December 15, 2004

BY DAVID ROEDER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Developers of the Lakeshore East site north of Millennium Park are mapping their next moves in the marketplace, apparently believing that a new round of hotel expansion is straight ahead.

Joel Carlins, president of Magellan Development Group Ltd., said he's talking to operators of five-star hotels overseas who want to come to Chicago. Carlins, who controls most of Lakeshore East with architect James Loewenberg, said vacant parcels along Wacker Drive next to the Swissotel could accommodate a couple new towers with hotel space. He said several operators are intrigued by the "condo hotel'' concept of individually owned rooms that's gaining traction in Chicago.

Carlins wouldn't detail the companies he's talking to. One obvious candidate would be the Mandarin Oriental chain, which was thwarted by the post-9/11 travel slump in its plans to come to the Near North Side. A Wacker Drive site would be better for the convention trade.

Two residential high-rises are at or near completion in Lakeshore East and two more will start in the next few months. Meanwhile, sources said Carlins and partners are the top bidder for two parcels within the site being sold by Archstone-Smith Trust. The 2.4 acres north of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield building are zoned for up to 1,500 housing units

edsg25

December 15th, 2004, 11:37 PM

Great post TUP!

See? People do read them :)

btw - you should all be watcing UIC-Duke on espn2 right now! Go Flames!!!

geoff, my alma mater...yours?

geoff_diamond

December 16th, 2004, 05:37 AM

UIC/Syracuse/FAU/MIT/UM yada yada yada :)

but, most importantly, UIC :)

BVictor1

December 16th, 2004, 06:11 AM

I had no idea that there was an original facade...so, you're right. that had to be an improvement.

I hope that the same (original facade) isn't true for a neighbor of Spertus...and I'm talking about the ugliest bldg down the entire streetwall, that being Johnson Publishing.

Well buildings like the Ebony/Jet Building, The Essex Inn were built in the 1950's. So the facade that you see for those are what's always been there.

BVictor1

December 16th, 2004, 12:51 PM

I don't fucking understand how I possibly missed posting this.

INSIDE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

THOMAS A. CORFMAN
Published December 15, 2004

Condos top Crain's: Crain's Chicago Business may be getting some new upstairs neighbors at 360 N. Michigan Ave.

The landlord, New York real estate investor Joseph Chetrit, has hired architect Lucien Lagrange to draw up plans for a gradual condominium conversion of the riverfront building, sources said.

Also under consideration is a condominium tower of more than 35 stories on an adjacent parking lot on Wacker Drive.

The historic structure was renamed for Crain Communications Inc. after the publisher leased six lower floors of the 21-story tower in 2000.

Lagrange, whose restoration projects include the 175 W. Jackson Blvd. office building, could not be reached for comment.

And if you don't know exactly where this is, the Crains Communication Building (Former London Gaurentee & Accident) is on the southwest corner of Michigan and Wacker, the vacant lot is to the right. In between this building and Mather Tower, which has had problems with falling terra-cotta several times.

The Urban Politician

December 16th, 2004, 06:07 PM

^Not clear. What exactly is this tower? And I still don't recall the vacant lot you're talking about.

Is this some sort of new construction that completely flew under the radar?

I'm shocked :eek2:

lazar22b

December 16th, 2004, 06:17 PM

^^It looks like it is. It looks like the lot should be on the corner of Michigan and Wacker, but I can't picture any empty lot there.

BVictor1

December 16th, 2004, 06:48 PM

Think of the block of Wacker between Michigan and Wabash. The Mather Building is the building that they restored the crown 2 years ago when they flew it by helecopter to the top. There is a narrow parking lot there.

The Urban Politician

December 16th, 2004, 08:50 PM

Damn! I can't believe nothing was ever announced about ut. Sounds exciting. I wonder who the developer/architect will be. I think 35 stories is actually appropriate for the location.

I heard Morton's is creating a new steakhouse around there, with a lunch and cocktail menu and bar. If this new highrise also has some ground-level activity, we could be talking about a whole new entertainment district to link N. Michigan Ave and River North to the loop!

Kevin J

December 16th, 2004, 10:21 PM

The parking lot is very small, so this 35-story condo tower is going to be very much a "sliver" building, probably limited to one unit per floor, with windows in only the front and rear. The view from the front will be the Wrigley Bldg. and Trump Tower.

The new Morton's is on Wacker Place, which is one block south of Wacker Drive. Morton's is mid-block between Michigan and Wabash. The Hard Rock Hotel is next door, including their new hipster restaurant China Grill, which faces Michigan. There's a restaurant in the Hotel Monaco at the corner of Wabash and Wacker Place too, though the name escapes me.

Morton's and China Grill are the type of restaurants that previously would have opened on the periphery of the Loop (River North, West Randolph, etc.) instead of in it, so this is indeed a very good sign. Park Grill in Millennium Park is a solid success as well, from what I hear. So a restaurant scene is developing south of the river near Michigan, where the dining highlights used to be limited to places like Bennigan's. It can only pick up steam with the addition of Lake Shore East, Trump, and everything else nearby.

northsidesoxfan

December 17th, 2004, 11:18 PM

Here are a few pictures I snapped today (12/17) before the batteries died in my crappy digital camera.

First, two of the Maple Tower taken from the west on Maple.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426552%3B23232%7Ffp7%3Enu%3D3248%3E9%3A9%3E937%3EWSNRCG%3D32327%3A8%3B76987nu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/3426552%3B23232%7Ffp7%3Enu%3D3248%3E9%3A9%3E937%3EWSNRCG%3D32327%3A8%3B7699%3Bnu0mrj

Then a picture of the soon to be replaced Dr. Scholl's building.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426552%3B23232%7Ffp7%3Enu%3D3248%3E9%3A9%3E937%3EWSNRCG%3D32327%3A8%3B79%3B%3B8nu0mrj

Also, a pic of the Bernadin at Chicago and Wabash taken from Dearborn. I wanted to get some pictures of the Sun Times building, but the batteries went dead after I took the Bernadin picture. Hmmm. It looks to me like the destruction of the Sun Times building is accelerating, but I have no pictures today to prove it.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426552%3B23232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2339%3D%3A9%3A%3D%3A28%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3B7%3C6%3A%3B49ot1lsi

geoff_diamond

December 18th, 2004, 06:56 AM

If anyone's still not clear on the empty lot in question... it sits just to the northeast of Hotel 71.

Kevin J - isn't the name something like Sweetwater Grill?

tm308

December 18th, 2004, 07:03 AM

Kevin J:
"The parking lot is very small, so this 35-story condo tower is going to be very much a "sliver" building, probably limited to one unit per floor, with windows in only the front and rear. The view from the front will be the Wrigley Bldg. and Trump Tower."

I think the space between the Mather Building and the Crain Communications Building (old London Guarentee Building) is where it will be built. Check out the little parking lot inbetween each building.

From the IBM Building:
http://www.pbase.com/tmoy2003/image/32197159/large.jpg

From the wabash St. bridge:
http://www.pbase.com/tmoy2003/image/32197160/large.jpg

BVictor1

December 19th, 2004, 02:30 AM

Hey

TM 308, if you have access to the IBM Building take of few shots of the Sun-Times from above.

What if the but a twin to Mather Tower right on that lot. For those of you who aren't familiar with Mather Tower, it's the skinny white building with the narrow tower in the center of the photo.

geoff_diamond

December 19th, 2004, 05:04 PM

Umm... the first Mather is ugly enough... I'm not sure that we'd want a second one :)

BVictor1

December 19th, 2004, 08:23 PM

Here is a rendering of the new dormity going up for Loyola University. The new dorm is on the northwest corner of Wabash anad Person, and The Clare at Watertower will be diagonally across the street on the southeast corner.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426646723232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2323%3D7%3A%3B%3D697%3D32327%3A%3B5%3A68%3A%3Anu0mrj

Here is the billboard rendering for the dornitory.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426646723232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2323%3D7%3A%3B%3D697%3D32327%3A%3B5%3A68%3A8nu0mrj

Sorry the photo isn't any better.

tm308

December 20th, 2004, 05:06 AM

BVictor1:
"TM 308, if you have access to the IBM Building take of few shots of the Sun-Times from above."

I was up in the IBM building only for a week last August. I may go there again this coming Feburary. If I do, I'll take a few overheads of the Sun-Times building (if it is still there :)).

Wu-Gambino

December 20th, 2004, 05:12 AM

^ Hotel 71 also has a good view:

http://www.pbase.com/rclick/image/34240300.jpg

MCC

December 20th, 2004, 06:34 AM

Great post TUP!

See? People do read them :)

btw - you should all be watcing UIC-Duke on espn2 right now! Go Flames!!!

I think the Flames might win the conference again this year if UWM runs out of gas. They would be a lock if Martell Bailey hadn't flunked out.

BTW how long ago did they take down the netting on Mather?

geoff_diamond

December 20th, 2004, 07:38 PM

I think the Flames better get their asses in gear if they're going to do that MCC.

Also, as far as the netting goes, I assume you're referring to what was around the cupola? If so, it's been down for at least 8 months or so.

The Urban Politician

December 20th, 2004, 11:35 PM

This is 1620 S Michigan, units on sale now. I think it looks very sleek. What do you guys think?

http://www.1620michigan.com/site/pics/484/18631/73913/86000/1620rendering.jpg

dancethingy

December 21st, 2004, 12:32 AM

Looks really good. I hope the real building looks as good or even better than the rendering.

chicagogeorge

December 21st, 2004, 02:31 AM

Hey that's about 4 blocks south of where my building is. Looks good, who is the developer?

BVictor1

December 21st, 2004, 03:00 AM

I love its very strong horizontal lines and glassy facade.

www.1620michigan.com

And how about this one. It's the same development company, but I don't know about architects.

http://www.630northfranklin.com/site/pics/462/16897/65332/67807/630Franklin_exterior.jpg

www.630northfranklin.com

BVictor1

December 21st, 2004, 07:13 PM

Jefferson Tower Construction Begins
By Mark Ruda
Last updated: December 21, 2004 10:21am

CHICAGO-Construction has begun at the northwest corner of Jefferson and Lake streets, where Jameson Development LLC is adding 198 units in a 25-story building in the Fulton River District. The developer hired James McHugh Construction Co. as general contractor for the $37-million Jefferson Tower project.

All of the units will be one-bedroom or one-bedroom-plus-den. Prices will range from $204,800 to $372,800 for the units, which range in size from 623 sf to 1,072 sf.

While the project is expected to benefit from its proximity to public transportation, one challenge facing McHugh will be checking vibration levels caused by the adjacent Green Line elevated tracks. Upgraded, sound-deadening windows are being installed in the building.

Completion is expected in April 2006, but the first units are scheduled to be delivered in January 2006. Loewenberg Associates Inc.is the architect for the project while Mesirow Stein Real Estate Inc. is program manager.

HowardL

December 21st, 2004, 07:50 PM

I can't quite finger this one:

December 21, 2004

Golub apartment project gets financing
Construction to start on Streeterville luxury building

By Alby Gallun
A joint venture led by Golub & Co. is getting ready to start construction on a 49-story luxury apartment building in Streeterville after securing financing for the project.
Washington D.C.-based Union Labor Life Insurance Co. has provided a construction loan for the 481-unit tower at 345 E. Ohio St., which will cost more than $125 million to build, said Michael Newman, president and CEO of Golub, a Chicago-based real estate firm. The apartment building, the first of two planned for the site, is slated to open in summer 2006.

Debt accounts for about 70% of the project’s cost, with equity accounting for the rest, Mr. Newman said. Golub’s equity partners in the joint venture are Boston-based real estate investment firm AEW Capital Partners and a pension fund advised by SSR Realty Advisors Inc., a subsidiary of New York-based MetLife Inc.

The apartment market is in the dumps right now amid a weak job market and low interest rates, which encourage buying over renting.

Yet developers, anticipating a recovery, are getting more active. Nearly 2,700 downtown apartments will come on the market in 2005 and 2006, the most over a two-year period since the early 1990s, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago-based real estate consulting firm.

We believe we’ll hit the market at the right time, Mr. Newman said of his firm’s project.

Golub expects to start construction of the project’s second phase, a 51-story, 420-apartment tower, within one to three years, he said.

The Urban Politician

December 21st, 2004, 08:12 PM

HowardL

December 21st, 2004, 08:34 PM

I checked Golub's website, but nothing is posted. This one snuck in under the collective skyscraper geek radar.

Steely Dan

December 21st, 2004, 09:41 PM

This one snuck in under the collective skyscraper geek radar.

not really, this project has been known about for some time. emporis has it listed as 321 east ohio instead of the 345 mentioned in the article. emporis lists 48 floors instead of the article's 49 floors, but this is most definitely the same project.

look at my boom rundown list over at SSP and click on 321 east ohio under the proposed projects. i don't think we have ever seen a rendering for this one, though. i too snooped around golub's website, but there is not a word about this project over there.

well, here's to hoping that it's not another grand plaza.

BVictor1

December 22nd, 2004, 12:25 AM

As mentioned yesterday, I took another trip past 1620 South Michigan Ave. Here's what's presently on the site.

http://images.snapfish.com/34268%3A2323232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C2%3A%3B8%3A%3C9ot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/34268%3A2323232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C2%3A%3B8%3A%3C%3Aot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/34268%3A2323232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2329%3D959%3D583%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C2%3A%3B8%3A%3C%3Bot1lsi

The Urban Politician

December 22nd, 2004, 12:54 AM

Nice pics, BV!

Not a big loss, I guess

MCC

December 22nd, 2004, 04:11 AM

I think the Flames better get their asses in gear if they're going to do that MCC.

Ugh, why does UIC suck? They looked good when I saw them play UWM at the Pavilion. Now they lost to a D-II team.

BVictor1

December 22nd, 2004, 03:28 PM

David Roeder
$30 million sale signals start of 2-tower project

December 22, 2004

BY David Roeder Sun-Times Columnist

Chicago's Golub & Co. has closed on the $30 million purchase of a vacant site in Streeterville. The two-acre property, running between Ohio and Grand west of McClurg Court, has been zoned for two high-rises in the 50-story range, the first one apartments and a later one expected to be apartments or condos.

Golub said the first building, containing 481 units, should be delivered in summer 2006. The Chicago developer leads an investment group that includes AEW Capital Partners and SSR Realty Advisors, with financing by Union Labor Life Insurance Co.

The seller of the site was the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois. The pension fund continues to own the 30-story office building on the western edge of the empty site, the former Time-Life Building at 541 N. Fairbanks.

Sources said Golub, lately an aggressive bidder on downtown sites, wants the office building, too. But Jon Bauman, the pension fund's executive director, and Golub President Michael Newman said they're aware of no current negotiations.

Bauman said the building has been appraised at $65 million and he's open to offers. Last week, one of the anchor tenants, the Chicago Park District, said it wants proposals for office space elsewhere, which could be a serious search or a tactic for lease renewal time. Bauman said the district has about 100,000 square feet.

THE 'BURBS SHALL LEAD THEM: If you follow the office leasing market long enough, you soon learn that suburban Chicago is the bellwether for downtown. Whether vacancy levels are going up or down, it happens first and faster in the suburbs.

The yearend market data hot off the press from Trammell Crow Co. showed suburban buildings had a good 2004, cutting average vacancies to 14.4 percent. A year ago, most market studies had the suburban number at about 19 percent.

Downtown, the vacancy level marginally increased in 2004. Trammell Crow puts the downtown figure at 14 percent. Its report also notes that subleases, a big factor a year ago, have diminished markedly.

"Companies, even though many are showing good quarterly numbers, are still cautious about their existing space,'' said George Kohl, executive vice president at Trammell Crow. He said the suburbs should continue to show modest improvement next year and expects that trend to take hold eventually downtown. The key is job growth, however, and Kohl notes there is no march of employers into downtown. The Trammell figures show the strongest suburban markets are the northern suburbs and the Schaumburg area while the weakest, with vacancies still topping 20 percent, is O'Hare.

SUBURBAN RENEWAL: In a $6.5 million sale, an affiliate of the private Ridge Property Trust has acquired a 410,000-square-foot industrial building on 25 acres at 5151 W. 73rd St., Bedford Park. Ridge Vice President Doug Hayes said the size of the parcel represents a great opportunity because of demand for centrally located industrial space. He plans to take down the current building and replace it with two modern structures of about 270,000 square feet each.

No tenants are in hand, but Hayes said interest in the properties is acute. "I'm not sure I'd be doing this out in Bolingbrook, but I'd do it in the city or close to it,'' he said. The seller is Homak Manufacturing Co., a maker of toolboxes that is ceasing operations. Sally Macoicz, senior director of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., represented Homak and the buyers, Ridge and Heitman Financial Management, in the deal.

GOOD DEED: When the law firm Ice Miller lost access to its 41st floor offices in the 135 S. La Salle building after the Dec. 6 fire, the tenant representation firm Julien J. Studley Inc. swung into action on its behalf. Senior Managing Director David Gelfand found a 5,000-square-foot space for the firm at 500 W. Monroe that the firm occupied just two days after the fire. Gelfand worked for free and the landlord in the Monroe building, Shorenstein Realty Services LLC, provided the temporary space rent-free. They are working on a long-term solution for the firm. Gelfand said he expects his client ultimately to take at least 10,000 square feet.

DOING THE DEALS: Inland Western Retail Real Estate Trust is buying 2.6 million square feet in the United States and Canada from affiliates of American Express Inc. The price was $390 million and American Express has signed 10-year leases for the sites. A non-listed real-estate investment trust, Inland Western focuses on retail properties but also invests in single-tenant sale-leasebacks. ... Mid-America Development Partners LLC has started work on a movie theater and shopping complex at the northwest corner of Route 59 and 95th St. in Naperville. The 35-acre site will feature an 11-screen Kerasotes theater.

lazar22b

December 23rd, 2004, 02:05 AM

I can't believe they will finally do something with that lot! That is great news!

BVictor1

December 24th, 2004, 05:56 PM

This is nothing too special is supose, other than to show that Chicago is still in a good position.

New-home sales drop 12%, but not here
City, area buck November trend

By John Handley and Sharon Stangenes, Tribune staff reporters. Staff reporter William Sluis and Tribune wire services contributed to this report
Published December 24, 2004

Sales of new single-family homes fell a steep 12 percent in November, the government said Thursday, but local builders say the effect is barely being felt in the Chicago area.

The Commerce Department said the annual sales pace dropped to 1.125 million single-family houses in November. The monthly decline was the sharpest in more than a decade. In October, new-home sales climbed to a record 1.278 million, higher than previously estimated.

"Some markets have been so hot that some cooling is expected," said real estate analyst Tracy Cross.

However, in the Chicago area, he said, housing sales were 12 percent ahead of the same period in 2003.

"We haven't noticed any precipitous drop since the end of the third quarter, though there were a couple of rough weeks in late November," said Cross, president of Tracy Cross and Associates in Schaumburg.

In the city of Chicago, sales soared 76 percent during the first three quarters of this year, he added.

"The national drop in housing sales has missed downtown Chicago. Numerous city projects have sold very quickly in the last quarter," said Keith Giles, principal in Frankel & Giles Real Estate and a partner in the Metropolis, a residential conversion of an office tower at State and Monroe Streets in the Loop.

The commerce report showed a 39.4 percent decrease in Midwest new-home sales last month, the steepest on record.

About 143,000 new homes were sold in the region on an annual basis, a 9.5 percent drop from the 158,000 sold in November 2003. However, the November pace still was higher than the rate for all of 2003, a record year, analysts said.

"In the Chicago area, we started to fall behind in sales starting the second week of November, but that's not worrisome," said real estate analyst Steve Hovany, president of Strategy Planning Associates in Schaumburg. "We're pretty steady on our projections for the year. Also, Chicago has outperformed the rest of the Midwest for several years."

Jack Sorenson, president of U.S. Shelter Group, an Elgin-based home builder, said the "market fundamentals remain strong. My sense is that the drop-off is seasonal."

Sorenson said his firm's main problem is finding enough land for new-home construction.

While surprised by the steep November decline, economists weren't overly concerned.

"Given everything else that we think we know about the market, I'm not going to lay awake worrying about this one," said David Seiders, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

Nor are many area builders.

"We saw a very strong November and we're seeing a strong December," said Christopher Shaxted, executive vice president of Lakewood Homes, based in Hoffman Estates. "We're up from a year ago, seasonally adjusted."

Shaxted said his company had a slight sales dip in October, but sales have rebounded.

"I think there are some issues in the very high end," particularly in downtown Chicago, where the market is slow for units priced above $1.5 million, Shaxted said.

As for the suburban market, "I don't see weakness," he said.

Nationally, sales of new homes also may have been depressed by the dismal weather. November was the fifth wettest on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

"We've got a strong economy, we've got rising incomes, we've got a relatively low unemployment rate--all these lead me to believe the underpinnings of the boom aren't changing rapidly," said Brian S. Wesbury, chief economist at Griffin Kubik Stephens & Thompson in Chicago.

There isn't any "bubble bursting," he said.

Another economist wasn't as sure.

Although members of the construction industry continue to deny that they are faced with overbuilding, there are growing signs of a real estate bubble, said A. Gary Shilling.

"More and more buyers are at the lower end of the income scale and need a loan of 3 percent or less in order to obtain a mortgage," said Shilling, who heads an investment firm in Springfield, N.J.

In addition to loans with tiny down payments, many builders are offering interest-only mortgages that require no reductions of principal, Shilling said.

"The last time these loans were popular was in the 1920s, before the Great Depression," he added.

He said many home buyers will face rolling over their mortgages within five years, so any decline in demand will place the real estate industry in a dilemma.

By then, "unless human nature has changed, there could be a huge inventory problem," Shilling said. "When you're in a bubble, there are no signs of dangerous backlogs until the whole thing comes crashing down."

Sales fell in three of four regions. In addition to the reported 39 percent in the Midwest, sales fell 28 percent in the West, to an annual rate of 321,000, and 7.1 percent in the Northeast, to 78,000. They rose 14 percent in the South, to 583,000.

The latest report was the second pointing to a slowdown in demand. Housing starts dropped 13 percent in November, the most in almost 11 years, to a 1.771 million annual rate, the Commerce Department reported last week.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

The Urban Politician

December 25th, 2004, 03:09 AM

^I'll tell you whats helping Chicago.

It's a great city and the prices are still somewhat reasonable. Surely the severely boosted prices in LA, SF, and NYC, both of land and of condos, is starting to affect development. In fact, I heard that in LA they're having a hard time just building schools, libraries, etc for the new projects based on land prices alone.

But in Chicago, even though prices are inflated, the new developments are still relatively affordable, and people are beginning to realize how much they can fetch for their money here

northsidesoxfan

December 25th, 2004, 07:01 AM

Scaffolding is up.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426%3B82%3B23232%7Ffp54%3Dot%3E2339%3D%3A9%3A%3D%3A28%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C43%3A4796ot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/3426%3B82%3B23232%7Ffp7%3Enu%3D3248%3E9%3A9%3E937%3EWSNRCG%3D32327%3B52%3B388%3Bnu0mrj

The wrecking ball is ready and waiting.

http://images.snapfish.com/3426%3B82%3B23232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2339%3D%3A9%3A%3D%3A28%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C43%3A47%3A2ot1lsi

Rivernorth

December 25th, 2004, 08:35 AM

ugh. terrible. :(

The Urban Politician

December 25th, 2004, 04:38 PM

http://images.snapfish.com/3426%3B82%3B23232%7Ffp54%3Dot%3E2339%3D%3A9%3A%3D%3A28%3DXROQDF%3E23236%3C43%3A4796ot1lsi

^Why don't they just build the damn thing in this parking lot instead of demolishing the Scholl building?

BVictor1

December 26th, 2004, 02:20 AM

This article is from the Skyline weekly neighborhood newspaper.

December 23, 2004

Downtowners voice opposition to Fourth Presbyterian condo plan
64-story condo plan resches Plan Commission Feb. 24
By: Adam Pincus-Correspondent

Using phrases like "traffic failure rate" and "canyonization," opponents of a proposed condo tower on the Fourth Presbyterian Church property urged city officials to reject the plan, which will come before the Chicago Plan Commission on Feb. 24.

A neighborhood panel spoke to and heard from over 300 residents who attended the community forum held Wednesday, Dec. 15, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, 160 E. Pearson St.

The five-member panel was made up of one member from each of the three group sponsore-the Connors Park Neighborhood Coalition, the Washington Square Assosiation and the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR). Independant experts on traffic and lighting also sat on the panel.

The majority of the residents speaking at the meeting were opposed to the 64-story condominium tower proposed for the church property on Michigan Avenue between Chestnut and Deleware. Event organizers said that church representatives were not invited to participate.

"The point is, we are experiencing explosive population growth without any meaningful increase in infrastructure to support the increased population," said panelist Robert Farkas, board member of Connors Park Neighborhood Coalition.

The city bore the brunt of the criticism, as residents questioned the city's emergency response capabilities, infrastructure plans and Ald. Burt Natarus' (42nd) decision making process.

Three city representatives attended the meeting, including Ald. Natarus, who spoke briefly, but would not comment on the development, citing his membership on the Chicago Plan Commission. Two officials of the DPD where also present, but only as observers.

Phoned after the meeting, Pete Scales, spokesperson for the Dept. of Planning and Development, said, "This is downtown, this is where we want density."

Scales was not able to comment on the impact of infrastructure at this time, but he noted that the Central Are Plan approved by the city last summer calls for greater density on Michigan Avenue.

The proposed tower is one of 10 projects planned for the neighborhood that would lead to a 70 percent increase in condominium units since 2000, according th Frakas. He also sited a traffic study by Land Strategies, Inc., commissioned by Connors Park, alleging that the intersection of Delaeare Place and Michigan Avenue is at a "failure rate" during the afternoon rush.

On friday, December 17, Alison Chisolm, a spokesperson for the church, noted that the proposed entrance is eastbound on Delaware and the exit is westbound on Chestnut, so traffic should not impact Michigan Ave.

She added, as well, that a study by Larry Okrent Association, filed with the Planned Development application, "concludes there is no negative impact. In fact, there is a positive impact."

The church, along with development partners Edward R. James Partners, LLC, and Opus North Delaware Condos, LLC, filed the planned development application with the city on September 29.

The 765-foot-tall building would replace two structures on the west side of the church property, which would be demolished. The church plans to occupy the first six floors of the new building. Above that, the developers would build 240 market-rate condominiums, paying $25 million to the church for the air rights.

Proceeds from the air rights would be used to partially fund a church expansion, endowment support, a gift to the McCormick Theological Seminary, and a new community center on Chicago Avenue for residnets of the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. The church has a current membership of about 5,300.

Following brief panelist presentations, more than 30 residents spoke. Of those, approximately 85 percent opposed the condominium.

Some, such as Ginny Hourigan, thought the condo would be more than just an aesthtic compromise for the church. "I think it is time to realize Fourth Persbyterian is more than just a church...it is the soul of Michigan Avenue, it is the soul of Chicago."

Others, such as Cindy Kaitzer, a 15-year resident of the neighborhood, were concerned about density. "The construction of a massive condominium tower, one of the largest and densest in the area, will exacerbate a stiutation which is already undesirable."

A Fourth Presbyterian member and downtown resident, George Dohrman III, commented after the meeting that the good done through the Chicago Avenue center would be achieved at the expense of the Michigan Avenue area. "The church has excellent programs, but it doesn't make sense to ruin one area of the city to help another," he said.

A handful of people spoke in support of the proposal, one noting that the Metrpolitan Planning Council had released a December 14 letter supporting the plan.

A member of SOAR, Larry McCracken, spoke in favor of the tower, citing the benefits of the church expansion. "There has been no mention made of the expanding needs of the church...no mention made of meals, or of students served by the church on a daily basis," he said.

Another neighborhood resident, and member of the church, Benny Hutchinson, also spoke in favor of the project. "I know we need the resources this project will bring us." He then added, "I also bow to the inevibility of development."

The Urban Politician

December 26th, 2004, 05:36 AM

^Great article, BVictor.

I am tempted to criticize these NIMBY's, but I don't live in the neighborhood--and it's easy for me to scream from my comfortable desk in skyscraper-starved Washington DC, "let them build the damn thing", but in reality the issue is probably a bit more complicated.

Either way, I have little doubt that the development will get approved despite this relatively small-sized opposition.

AJphx

December 26th, 2004, 09:04 AM

What is planned for the Dr. Scholl's site?

BVictor1

December 26th, 2004, 10:10 AM

What is planned for the Dr. Scholl's site?

A building by Smithfield Properties called 30 West Oak

http://www.30westoak.com/images/bldgimage.jpg

Nothing too special in my opinion.

BVictor1

December 26th, 2004, 03:36 PM

There is no way that I could possibly pass up posting this article. I know both of these great people. They were professors at my school (Ikkinois Institute of Technology). Jeanne's husband Mark was my studio professor my first semester for my third year. He's really nice. I'm really proud to see they're getting so much praise for their work. It's also proud to know that they are a hometown team producing such great work.

CHICAGOANS OF THE YEAR: ARCHITECTURE

Jeanne Gang: Revival of the fittest

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published December 26, 2004

Not all of Chicago's architectural fireworks in 2004 came from Millennium Park and its collection of imported superstars. Homegrown talents, especially young architects, made their mark, signaling that Chicago's architectural future may be as bright as its illustrious past. One of those making a big impact was Chicago architect Jeanne Gang.

Gang, 40, taught at Harvard and had her work exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Art Institute. She made a short list of nationally recognized architects vying to design a new U.S. courthouse in Alabama (the winner will be announced next year). And her 12-person firm, Studio/Gang Architects, completed a bracing new social services building, the Kam Liu Building, in Chicago's Chinatown.

The litany goes on. Gang and her husband/co-principal, 45-year-old Mark Schendel, won an international design competition for the City of Chicago's Ford Calumet Environmental Center on the city's Far Southeast Side. And the pair broke into the high-rise leagues by snagging the job as design consultant for a couple of condo towers at the big Lakeshore East development in Chicago, now rising on a former golf course just west of Lake Shore Drive.

Moving roof

Not bad, considering that Gang and her firm finished their first major building, Rockford's Starlight Theatre, in 2003. Designed when the firm was known as Studio Gang/O'Donnell, the theater features a moving roof that opens like the petals of a flower. That allows an outdoor community theater group to perform whatever the weather. Both the theater and the Liu building in Chinatown won awards this year from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Gang grew up in Belvidere, not far from Rockford, the daughter of a civil engineer and a part-time seamstress who works with quilts and makes fabrics. When she was a kid, the family would go out and look at new roads and bridges. Her mother's influence is equally apparent in her exploration of new textures for familiar materials. For a future social services building on Chicago's South Side, for example, she's playing with brick so it forms a partly open, screenlike facade rather than a massive, load-bearing wall.

"These are women's things," Gang said in an interview at the firm's offices at 1212 N. Ashland Ave., though she hastened to add that there is nothing sentimental about her interest in the expression of materials. "The more things you have in your bag of tricks," she said, "the better."

Gang designs in a modernist idiom, but unlike the abstract, steel-and-glass boxes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, her work usually has some recognizable feature that invites non-architects to explore it. The Liu Building, for example, flaunts a skin of titanium shingles that resemble the scales of a dragon. Similarly, the Ford Calumet Environmental Center will have an outdoor patio encased in a nestlike metal mesh. The mesh not only will keep birds from flying into glass but also will project a strong natural image.

As the environmental center design shows, Gang believes in buildings that respond directly to the particulars of their site. She's also big on what she calls "veiling" -- buildings that reveal themselves gradually rather than all at once. And reflecting her tenure with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Gang believes that, by creatively interpreting a building's set of uses, or program, architects can simultaneously generate the form of its exterior and energize the spaces of its interior.

"I never thought about [architecture] as style," she said.

Large-scale projects

While the brutally tight economics of high-rise housing have frustrated many talented architects, Gang and Schendel, another Koolhaas alum, insist they can ride this tiger without getting bitten. Because they worked on large-scale projects for Koolhaas, they are not intimidated at the prospect of making the leap to 30- to 40-story high-rises at Lakeshore East. Their towers, which will be produced by architect-of-record Loewenberg + Associates, will rise across Columbus Drive from the 1,136-foot Aon Center.

"That scale is completely comfortable to us from the [Koolhaas] experience," Schendel said. They credit one of Lakeshore East's co-developers, Jim Loewenberg, for seeking out a "hungry" young firm that wants to push the aesthetic envelope. Loewenberg, both a developer and an architect, has designed many of the oft-criticized exposed concrete high-rises in River North.

As impressive as Gang's output has been, the most telling sign of her success is the stack of resumes that sit on a desk inside her firm's office. Many are from out-of-town architects, including some from overseas. Word about Gang and her firm is clearly spreading, as is word of Chicago's architectural revival after the largely dormant decade of the 1990s.

"If we're not hiring, they go elsewhere in the city," Schendel said.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

The Urban Politician

December 26th, 2004, 04:23 PM

Another great article that sums up the Chicago area's housing situation. I love the last paragraph, that says "Detroit is becoming another Chicago":

THE MARKET
Feeling warmth far from Sun Belt

Wayne Faulkner, Real Estate editor
Published December 26, 2004

Considering we're far from the Sun Belt, the desert or warm ocean waters, the Chicago area is pretty hot -- its real estate, that is.

While our house price appreciation rate can't compare with that on the West Coast, most here probably would agree that we're paying high enough property taxes without seeing prices jump more than 50 percent in one year, as they did in Las Vegas. Metro Chicago, which includes Kenosha and Gary, came in with a 4.9 percent increase in the same period, according to the Federal Housing Finance Board.

Our overall population has risen moderately, though suburban counties saw big jumps from 1990 to 2000, and the city finally reversed its losing ways. But our housing-permit numbers for 2003 were sixth highest in the nation, with Atlanta leading the pack and only Washington, D.C., topping us outside the sunny South or arid West, according to figures from the National Association of Home Builders.

Some things set us apart from the majority of America. For one, more than half of all homes built in the Chicago area last year were not single-families, but rather condominiums and townhouses, according to Robert Shield, senior vice president of Draper & Kramer Mortgage Corp. That perhaps reflects the filling in of formerly wide-open suburbs and the skyrocketing costs of land.

In the city, vacant lots are often selling for what houses cost just a few years ago. We long ago passed the threshold where a $1 million property could be seen as teardown material. In fact, in Hinsdale, one real estate agent reports a second wave of teardowns, with homes less than 10 years old biting the dust in favor of still bigger and more expensive ones.

We can thank immigration for a lot of our net gain in population; that's especially true in the city. But the immigration surge is being felt outside the city as well. Staff reporter John Handley last Sunday reported about the changing face of the housing market here and around the country. He quoted Christopher Shaxted, executive vice president of Lakewood Homes: "Immigrants have been driving the housing boom here. As high as 40 percent of first-time buyers are immigrants."

There's hardly a Chicago neighborhood untouched by home construction. McNaughton Builders plans $400,000-plus houses in McKinley Park. Houses around that price are going up, scattered around nearby Brighton Park. The vacant lots of the South Side's Woodlawn neighborhood are filling with new, market-rate housing. New houses are sprouting here and there throughout Morgan Park.

The South Side lakefront to 47th Street is undergoing enormous change, with condos, apartments and houses going up or planned.

Many of the Chicago Housing Authority's projects are beginning to be remade into hopefully mixed-income neighborhoods, with $1.5 billion in work planned, replacing 53 high-rises with 25,000 housing units.

In the suburbs, time was that four stories made a high-rise. Not so now. Optima Inc. is putting up Optima Old Orchard Woods, a three-building, 20-story complex in Skokie; there is a crop of high-rise condos in downtown Evanston; and now a 14-story rental building is proposed for Evanston across Howard Street from Rogers Park's Gateway Centre complex. Gamonley Group is building a 12-story condo in the Seven Bridges area of Woodridge.

There seems to be no end in sight for building in downtown Chicago, with several more large high-rise condo and rental buildings announced in the last few months. Some were predicting the decline of the urban high-rise residential building after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But, sales numbers for downtown Chicago are near record levels, reached before 9/11.

Just when you thought the sprawl of suburban Chicago had reached about as far into the sunset as it could comes large-scale development in Kendall and DeKalb Counties. Staff reporter Sharon Stangenes recently reported that Centex Homes is planning 2,000 homes in Yorkville, 55 miles from the Loop, and Lakewood Homes has received approval from Plano, 58 miles from the Loop, for the second phase of its Lakewood Springs development, bringing that project to 5,000 homes. Cambridge Homes has announced plans for a 2,600-home development in Pingree Grove, 49 miles from the Loop and west of Elgin.

Pingree Grove, Plano and Yorkville look like they'll be the new Napervilles, Schaumburgs and Gurnees.

Building opportunities aren't only blossoming on the prairie, they're also sprouting up in long-overlooked suburbs such as University Park, Matteson and Lynwood.

There was a time in the 1970s that some said Chicago would become another Detroit. They were wrong. Now there's evidence in the form of commercial and residential development in Motown that Detroit is becoming another Chicago.

chicagogeorge

December 26th, 2004, 05:57 PM

Great article,
The housing boom is occuring all over the metro area. Suburbia keep expandin in all directions (except east), but the city takes the cake! The shit you see happening all around the city in unfreaking believable!

The Urban Politician

December 27th, 2004, 04:29 AM

http://www.fifieldco.com/images/showcase/entrance.JPG

^Okay, don't ask why I posted this. It's the entrance of the newly constructed 120 N Jefferson. Isn't it a beauty (the entrance)?

The Urban Politician

December 28th, 2004, 06:38 AM

Some more stuff. Artistic renderings and info on a few buildings planned for Park Boulevard (the replacement housing for Stateway Gardens):

http://www.landonbonebaker.com/inprogress/images/PARK01.jpg

http://www.landonbonebaker.com/inprogress/images/PARK02.jpg

http://www.wwapc.com/work/park_boulevard/2004-01.jpg

PARK BOULEVARD
Park Boulevard is new construction of a seven story, 72,000 sq. ft. building with 55 units, two-thirds of which are designated as either affordable or CHA. The first floor of the building is dedicated to retail/commercial space. The building is part of the Hope VI redevelopment of the historic Stateway Gardens CHA site and is part of a planned development.

Madden/Wells:

http://www.landonbonebaker.com/planning/images/madden1.jpg

http://www.landonbonebaker.com/planning/images/madden2.gif

oshkeoto

December 28th, 2004, 07:42 AM

^ Oh, those beige/forest green townhouses are so ugly...why...

That five-story red-and-green thing, though, the first picture, that's pretty cool.

The Urban Politician

December 28th, 2004, 06:48 PM

Parking places
What should a parking garage look like? In Chicago, the issue is anything but academic.

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published December 28, 2004

Every day, millions of Americans do something that has a profound but little-noticed impact on the fragile texture of cities: They drive into a parking garage.

As they head up a ramp, the tension builds: "Will my car get dented? How will I find the elevator? Will that Chevy racing down the aisle run me over?" But there is greater reason for concern: Like all buildings, a parking garage can either bring vitality to a city or suck the energy right out of it.

There is, of course, the eyesore garage we all know and despise, the three-dimensional cash station for the garage owner that assaults passersby with crumbling concrete and stark fluorescent lights. Yet there also are parking garages with ground-floor shops that enliven sidewalks, and facades that acknowledge that people look at garages as well as drive into them. Some of them, such as the circular garages that form a pedestal for the corncob-shaped towers of Marina City, even manage to be beautiful.

All of that raises a simple but extremely thorny question: What should a parking garage look like? In Chicago, the issue is anything but academic because Mayor Richard M. Daley and his planners have declared war on parking garages that look like parking garages. Instead, they are to be brick-and-mortar chameleons, blending in with everything from Lakeview houses to Loop office buildings.

Daley also wants the harsh surfaces of parking garages to be softened with hanging baskets, flower boxes, roof gardens and other greenery. Daley's plan "will go a long way in the ongoing beautification and improvement of our central area," city officials trumpeted after the City Council passed the mayor's garage landscaping ordinance last year.

But a close look at Chicago's new garages reveals an outcome that is far more complex, or just plain silly. The new ones tend to be a strange, stage-set hybrid -- buildings for storing cars that pretend to be buildings where people live and work. Many of them have an eerie look, like a house where everyone has pulled down the window shades and never plans on coming out. Almost comically, the plants that adorn some of the garages are doing what outdoor plants in Chicago typically do in December: They're dying.

Which is why the mayor's plan, hyped as the latest step in his "greening of Chicago," is really more "the weeding of Chicago." It's a beautification fiat carried to extremes, Daley's Martha Stewartizing run amok.

At first glance, the words "distinguished design" and "garage" would seem to go together as well as "Cubs" and "pennant-winning." Garages are not built for the ages. They are the ultimate capitalist tools, machines that make the land pay. But Chicago has somehow become a showcase of good garages. They range from the Self-Park at 60 E. Lake St., which architect Stanley Tigerman endowed with a whimsical facade that resembles a Rolls-Royce grille, to the Wabash-Randolph Self-Park next to Marshall Field's State Street store, which architect Lucien Lagrange shaped to complement the muscular Chicago School buildings of the Loop. And the city's vaunted ability to elevate construction into art continues at the under-construction 111 S. Wacker office building, where architect Jim Goettsch has turned the underside of a parking ramp into a spectacular piece of sculpture that sweeps through the building's lobby.

So why the fakery? Perhaps because city officials are writing rules that deal with the lowest common denominator of design, punishing the best architects for the sins of the worst.

What is happening in Chicago has implications for cities throughout the region and the nation. Evanston, for example, is allowing the construction of sizable garages at the base of the new condominium towers that are transforming its downtown. And car-oriented, Sun Belt cities such as Houston have for decades permitted towering multistory garages in their downtowns. For them, as well as Chicago, the issue of whether a parking garage should wear a disguise has major implications for how the cities of the 21st Century will look and work.

If you want to understand the anatomy and the aesthetics of a parking garage, then let Gordon Prussian show you around.

Prussian, 81, is the chairman and self-described "chief curmudgeon" of General Parking, a Chicago real estate partnership that owns all or part of about a dozen downtown garages. He wears a dark green hat that matches the shade of his BMW 745i and the stylish logo that adorns the company's garages and those of Chicago-based InterPark, which bought General Parking's operating arm in 1997. You've undoubtedly seen that logo if you've cruised the Loop: a white "P" on a field of green with a downward-pointing arrow.

To drive with Prussian is to slip through a looking glass and enter a new world in which downtown Chicago's world-renowned architecture fades into the background and its ever-growing number parking garages, typically ignored, come center stage. Counting garages and surface lots, there are more than 100,000 parking spaces available to the public in Chicago's central area, an increase of at least 15,000 spaces since 1991.

Prussian begins at one of the structures targeted by Daley's beautification edict -- the South Loop Garage, a 750-space, 12-story garage built in the 1980s at 318 S. Federal St. It's directly across Federal from the Monadnock Building, a chocolate-brown, turn-of-the-last-century skyscraper that is a staple of architecture tours. With walls of exposed concrete and an interior that's open to the elements, the architecture of the South Loop Garage is charitably described as "functionalist."

Prussian drives his BMW up the ramp, ticking off features as he goes along: The underside of the concrete ceilings is painted white to make the inside of the garage seem safer and brighter. Floors are labeled by theme and the elevator lobbies offer "pull-outs," little pieces of paper, to remind forgetful drivers where they parked. The elevators are near buildings that generate traffic -- in this case, the Union League Club on Jackson Boulevard rather than the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center on Van Buren Street.

"We don't get much business from there," Prussian says of the jail.

Like most downtown garages, this one has parking spaces that are 8 1/2 feet wide as opposed to 9 feet wide in a suburban mall, where the extra 6 inches are added to enable families to load kids and bags in cars. Like airplanes with tightly packed seats, the closely spaced city garages allow operators to cram in more cars and generate more profit.

But the South Loop Garage's most important feature can only be glimpsed when you stand back and take in the whole thing: It's big. It sprawls across half of its block, measuring roughly 100 feet from east to west and 220 feet from north to south. Chicagoans take beefcake garages like that for granted, but such girth is unheard of in, say, Manhattan, where hyperexpensive land values dictate the construction of skyscrapers and other uses that generate considerably more income than garages do.

A typical Manhattan garage is about half the width of its counterpart in Chicago, Prussian explains. That difference -- think of it as the deep-dish garage versus the thin-crust garage -- has major consequences for urban design. The tiny Manhattan garages, which must be operated by attendants skilled at squeezing cars into itsy-bitsy spaces, can fade into the woodwork of New York's skyscrapers. But Chicago's long-span garages, which are so spacious that drivers can park the cars themselves, are frequently as tall as skyscrapers.

The tallest free-standing downtown garage, at the corner of Lake and Wells Streets, rises 15 stories, or six stories taller than the first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Office Building, which was completed in Chicago in 1885. (Parking garages usually don't exceed 12 stories because drivers will only tolerate five or six 360-degree revolutions, each carrying them two stories higher, before they get to the roof, according to Pier Panicali, a vice president at the Chicago office of Desman Associates, a parking garage design specialist.) Even the garages at the bottom of the city's condominium high-rises can soar as high as a 10-story building.

And it was those garages, in particular, that got City Hall's attention in the late 1990s.

Lacking glass or grilles that would mask parked cars from passersby, these vehicle warehouses brought blight to new heights, such as the one at the One Superior Place apartment tower, which was designed by Loewenberg + Associates, a firm responsible for many of River North's hulking high-rises. In response to a public outcry over these monsters, the City Council in 1999 passed a measure that encouraged developers to screen the interiors of their garages from passersby. Then, last year, at Daley's behest, the council approved new landscaping requirements for both new and existing downtown garages as part of the mayor's push to overhaul Chicago's outdated zoning ordinance.

By April 1, 2007, the law states, the owner of every existing, multistory non-residential parking garage in downtown Chicago must submit a landscape plan to the city's Department of Planning and Development. The plan must spell out how the owner will screen at least half of a garage's openings with such things as hanging baskets or flower boxes. Rooftop gardens, another mayoral favorite, are encouraged. Once the landscape plan is approved, the owner will have six months to get the greenery in place.

Owners of new free-standing garages must screen sloping floors so they can't be seen from nearby sidewalks. Openings above the second floor must use glass, screening panels or other elements "that make the parking structure more architecturally compatible with surrounding buildings," the city ordinance states.

The law is equally strict on so-called "accessory" garages, which are typically found at the base of high-rises. They are to be judged, the city says, on the degree to which they blend in with the building they serve.

If you guessed that these requirements promise to make it more expensive for people such as Gordon Prussian to build parking garages, you would be right.

Figuring in the cost of sprinklers and air-handling systems, which are a must in enclosed garages, his son Michael, General Parking's president, estimates the premium at 20 percent. Unless parking operators work differently from other businesses, some of those increases are bound to be passed on to consumers, who already are paying rates such as $26 a day to store their cars downtown.

There is a price, in other words, for garage beautification. The question is: Is the reality of dolled-up garages as good as the city's rhetoric?

True, the new garages represent an improvement over the old eyesores, but that's setting the bar pretty low. If you can't afford tickets to Second City and need a good laugh, then try the landscaped garages and their foliage follies.

Take the big garage at the base of the Millennium Centre, a residential tower at Dearborn and Ontario Streets designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz of Chicago. While the garage handsomely complements the Art Deco Revival skyscraper that soars above it, the five levels of planter boxes hanging from its facade are a sad joke. Maybe they looked nice in August, but this being December, the plants in them are sickly and bedraggled. Parking customers occasionally use the boxes as impromptu garbage cans.

"It probably looked really good on the rendering," laughed Denise Casalino, commissioner of the city's Department of Planning and Development, when a visitor showed her a snapshot of one dreary planter box.

There's a lesson here for Daley: Plants in the sky need lots of TLC, especially when they're bathed in noxious fumes coming out of tailpipes. To garage operators, maintaining the plants almost surely is a low priority. Which raises the specter that Daley's plan will produce hanging weeds instead of hanging gardens. So why not just do away with the requirements for hanging baskets and flower boxes, especially because they threaten to gussy up the clean lines of the city's better existing garages?

Another problem with the city's rules: They're giving us ghost garages, such as the one at the Farralon, 600 N. Dearborn St., another Loewenberg + Associates condo high-rise.

Instead of openings that reveal the cars inside, the Farralon's garage has translucent panes of glass that shield the garage from the street. That sounds good, but the outcome trades the blight of ugliness for the blight of lifeless uniformity. All the glass panes look the same -- a deadly white. There are no voyeuristic views of couples kissing or even office workers poring over their computers. All the random, chaotic energy of the city seems squelched. Multiply this effect by two and you get a sense of the banality that has been inflicted on the cityscape by such large-scale concealed garages as the one at the North Pier Apartment Tower, 474 N. Lake Shore Drive, by Dubin, Dubin & Moutoussamy. As the skyscraper butts up against the Drive, the louvers disguising its garage have all the charm of a nuclear power plant. The new garage beautification law wisely suggests eliminating such eyesores.

While louvers and other screens offer practical benefits -- they block the wind and keep snow from piling up on cars along a garage's perimeter -- they have drawbacks, too. Completely screening a garage's interior means no one on the sidewalk can watch the people inside. Passersby cannot play the crime-deterring role of "eyes on the street," the phrase that the urbanologist Jane Jacobs coined for the way city neighborhoods police themselves.

But for every rule about ugly parking garages, there is a contradiction, a sparkling exception that makes crafting effective design mandates extremely difficult.

If a complete camouflage job sounds like a bad idea, based on such duds as the North Pier garage, then consider the mighty, X-braced John Hancock Center. The parking on its lower floors is deftly hidden behind windows that fool you into thinking there are offices behind them. But that subterfuge is perfectly acceptable. Any openings would disturb the pure geometry of the great truncated obelisk.

Even so, it's hard to be persuaded by the well-meaning but lackluster stage-set architecture of the free-standing garages that respond to the city's garage beautification drive: the 2-year-old Mart Parc Wells garage at 401 N. Wells St., which apes the Art Deco architecture of the nearby Merchandise Mart; the Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center garage, open since May, which mimics nearby townhouses along Wellington Avenue; and the Government Center Self-Park at 181 N. Clark St., just two months old, which tries to blend into the Loop but winds up resembling a banal, suburban-style office building.

At the hospital garage, by RTKL architects and Desman Associates, the pretense is carried out to lengths that are practically Disneyesque.

The big garage pretends to be small, with brick walls that echo the scale of nearby houses, metal grids that suggest windowpanes, and extra-wide planter boxes. The visual cues tell you that someone lives inside, but, of course, this is a place that only cars call home. Form follows fakery, not the building's underlying structure, as at the Hancock.

The only thing missing is an actress in period costume who comes out and waters the shivering plants. For all it respects its neighborhood, the garage still rubs the wrong way in a town that has long valued honesty of expression.

Which brings us to the garages that work: They work because they follow the principle of stylized honesty.

At Lagrange's 14-year-old Wabash-Randolph Self-Park, vertical green pipes endow typical garage openings with a layered, three-part look that recalls the rhythms of Chicago's turn-of-the-century office buildings. The street-level facade has stylish flat columns and shops that enliven the sidewalk. Mechanical equipment is concealed in stylish mini-temples on the roof. Yet there is no attempt to hide the fact that this is a garage. Rather, in the best Chicago tradition, the design takes the facts of the building and transforms them into straightforward, workaday beauty, like a carpenter wearing neatly-pressed overalls.

Wabash-Randolph is hardly an isolated example.

Solomon Cordwell Buenz's five-year-old Rush-Ontario-Wabash Garage is a visual knockout because it has a perforated metal screen that expresses the diagonals of its sloping ramps. The same goes for Ralph Johnson's sleek new Contemporaine condo high-rise at 516 N. Wells St., which showcases the diagonal ramps within its base. And at 111 S. Wacker, Goettsch takes the garage to a whole new level, making the most of a ramp that leads from street level to a multistory garage within the office building.

The underside of the ramp swoops through the glassy lobby, its ascent marked by a stepped plaster soffit and fluorescent accent lights. The soffit and the lights dematerialize the heaviness of the concrete ramp, making it seem as weightless as a Japanese fan. This extraordinary visual drama is wrought from the most ordinary facts of everyday life.

Can we have a little more honesty, then? Can we have some garages that aren't afraid to be themselves?

Bright people in the planning department, including Sam Assefa, the new deputy commissioner for urban design, recognize that the long-term solution to the "necessary evil" of the parking garage is to attack the core of the problem rather than the symptom.

It is to make the garages disappear, or at least shrink, by encouraging more people to take buses and trains to work. (Currently, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council, about two-thirds of downtown workers take public transit while the rest drive.) Wisely, the law offers developers "density bonuses" that hold out the carrot of more square footage if they put garages underground.

But Chicago's high water table and often-squishy soil tend to make underground garages extremely expensive. So for now, at least, the big aboveground parking garages aren't going away.

And step one is one for the mayor and his planners to acknowledge that garages can be attractive additions to the cityscape by artfully expressing what they really are. Tacking on flower boxes and false fronts isn't the answer. Why homogenize the city when its glory is the chock-a-block intensity of its often-clashing uses?

The best strategy for the garages is to extend and expand the Chicago tradition of bold, honest architecture rather than going down the road of well-intentioned fakery.

That's something to think about the next time you drive up the parking ramp.

- - -

Great (and not-so-great) moments in the history of Chicago parking garages -- an architectural guide

- 1918 -- Chicago's first multistory parking garage, the Hotel LaSalle Garage, made its debut at 215 W. Washington St. With a brick and terra cotta facade by architects Holabird & Roche, the garage had an innovative interior that combined a ramp and elevator for efficiently moving cars. It's still operating today.

-1926 -- The eclectic Jewelers Building let security-conscious jewelers drive into the skyscraper from lower Wacker Drive. Then elevators would take their cars to assigned parking stalls on the first 22 floors. Because of mechanical failures and the growing size of cars, the system was dropped in 1940. The garage floors were turned into offices.

- 1929 -- Architect M. Louis Kroman took the Art Deco celebration of the car into high gear at the Ritz 55th Garage at 1525 E. 55th St. He festooned its terra cotta facade with every automotive image imaginable: steering wheels, stoplights, tires, gearshifts and a sleek, open-air roadster.

- 1933 -- The Nash Tower at the Century of Progress world's fair used an elevator to showcase the latest models of the now-defunct carmaker. The tower's sleek see-through design also demonstrated the space-saving advantages of mechanical car storage.

- 1955 -- With car ownership soaring after the Depression and World War II, Chicago built numerous down-town parking garages, most of them utilitarian eyesores. This one, constructed at 11 W. Wacker Drive, was dubbed the "bird-cage."

- 1962 -- Rising where Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler's Schiller Building and its Garrick Theater once stood, the Garrick Garage at 60 W. Randolph St. artlessly mimicked the destroyed masterpiece with the ornamental patterns of its concrete grille.

- 1967 -- Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City showed how the words "concrete garage" and "stunningly beautiful" don't have to be mutually exclusive. The complex's circular parking floors formed a delicate, airy base for the corncob-shaped residential towers.

- 1969 -- Its elegantly severe geometry reflecting the high-water mark of postwar modernism, the Madison-Franklin Parking Facility by Chicago architects Schipporeit-Heinrich won a Distinguished Building Award from the American Institute of Architects. It was torn down to make way for an office building.

- 1973 -- The world's busiest airport got what was, when built, the world's biggest parking garage. Designed by C.F. Murphy Associates of Chicago, the 9,266-space garage at O'Hare International Airport has 79 acres of parking that sprawl over six levels.

- 1986 -- Postmodern whimsy came to the parking garage in the Self-Park at 60 E. Lake St., designed by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman. The hilariously clever facade resembles an oversize Rolls-Royce front with such details as a shiny grille, hood ornament, faux headlights and awnings that look like tire treads.

- 1999 -- Demonstrating how late 20th Century architects were as fascinated by dynamic, diagonal forms as 1930s architects were with streamlining, the Rush-Ohio-Wabash Self-Park by Chicago architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz flaunted a deliberately off-kilter aluminum grid that expresses the angle of the garage's ramps.

- 2004 -- Reflecting Mayor Richard M. Daley's desire to make buildings in Chicago more sensitive to the environment, the roofs of new parking garages are being planted with greenery. At the new Government Center Self-Park at 181 North Clark St., part of the roof is covered with plastic tubs filled with dirt and plants.

BVictor1

December 28th, 2004, 08:05 PM

State Panel To Consider $178M Near North Facility
By Mark Ruda
Last updated: December 28, 2004 10:00am

CHICAGO-Plans for a $177.5-million independent to assisted-living facility at 55 E. Pearson St. will be considered by the state’s Health Facilities Planning Board in March, 18 months after it won a favorable recommendation from the city’s plan commission. Homewood-based Franciscan Sisters of Chicago Service Corp. is hoping to build a 50-story building on the south side of Pearson Street between Rush Street and Wabash Avenue, replacing two buildings used by Loyola University's Water Tower campus.

The state panel that oversees plans for all new healthcare facilities or expansions is involved because plans for the Clare include a 32-bed skilled nursing facility. Plans for the Clare include one-, two- and three-bedroom rental and for-sale units a block off the Magnificent Mile. The Clare will be one of four projects considered in March, including a $131-million addition and improvement project at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet.

Lower Wacker

December 28th, 2004, 08:17 PM

This may have already been in a thread (sry if it was) but i havent seen this development in a thread yet, so i thought id post a quick link to a very cool website. This looks like its gonna get built.[URL=http://www.riversideparkchicago.com/about.html]

BVictor1

December 29th, 2004, 02:27 PM

Risky business: Real estate deals that went sour

December 29, 2004

BY DAVID ROEDER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Say this for the year 2004 in real estate: It lived up to expectations.

Of course, the expectations weren't much to begin with. The office market spent most of the year in a state of fear, worrying over the impact that new buildings and corporate relocations will have on downtown rents. The industrial market, which had seemed impervious to downturns, finally slowed as the area suffered a continued loss of manufacturing jobs. A consolation is that Chicago, onetime "hog butcher for the world," seems destined to become "warehouser for the world." The salaries will be lower, if not the poetic possibilities.

And then there were condos, condos everywhere. The better the views and the closer to downtown, the better they sold. The entire central area of the city could see about 6,000 new units hitting the market once tabulations for this year are complete, close to the record performance of 1999.

It would seem real estate is still a good game for the financially savvy. But it's a balance of risk and reward. With that in mind, here's a subjective list of the year's biggest losers in development and other aspects of real estate around Chicago.

1. B.J. Spathies -- A onetime high-flier who insisted she could see value where other developers couldn't, Spathies left town in disgrace after handing over her final projects to lender Lehman Brothers. She let herself be swamped by risky financing known as "mezzanine" debt, which is a bit like a person maxing out on credit cards. According to a suit from Lehman, she diverted $3.7 million in condo deposits for other uses, although no buyer apparently lost money. Spathies filed for bankruptcy in July, claiming assets of less than $50,000. It was a sad outcome for one of the few women to become a major developer.

2. Nicholas Gouletas -- The chairman of American Invsco Corp. paid $35 million for the site of the former Columbus Hospital, 2520 N. Lakeview, in 2001. He came up with a three-tower design with units starting at $1 million. It was to mark a new achievement for the condo converter. But the post 9/11 market was troublesome, and his banks grew anxious. He's in default to just about everyone involved in the deal. If the project happens as envisioned, he might be pushed to the sidelines, from which the tireless dealmaker will have a firsthand view of the bridges he burned. He also saw his son, Nicholas Jr., leave Invsco to start his own firm in 2004.

3. Prime Group Realty Trust -- The continued slump in Chicago office leasing has hit this real estate investment trust hard. For years, it kept up the fiction that its portfolio was worth far more than its stock price indicated. When reality hit, shares plummeted. It lost its biggest tenant, Arthur Andersen, and others such as J.P. Morgan Chase and IBM are leaving its buildings. Finally, it somehow messed up sales talks with E. Barry Mansur and Michael Reschke, a former chairman of the company whom the board ousted in 2002. The company OKd the sale, then said the financing wasn't there. Mansur and Reschke deny that. Lawsuits abound.

4. Gov. Blagojevich -- He badly wanted $217 million from a mortgage on the Thompson Center to balance the books. He wanted it so badly that he apparently overlooked state law. Attorney General Lisa Madigan said a three-fifths majority vote is required to put the state in debt, when the legislative roll call on the mortgage fell three votes shy of the threshold. Madigan nullified the mortgage, but after the state incurred some $532,000 in bills for the deal, mostly from lawyers and bond insurers.

5. John Sweeney and Monroe Investment Partners LLC -- They were surprised by a political maelstrom that has left plans for a new South Side shopping center in tatters. They bought the old Ryerson Steel plant at 8301 S. Stewart and wanted Wal-Mart to anchor new construction there. The local alderman backed the project, but the City Council rejected it under pressure from unions. Wal-Mart canceled plans to build anywhere in Chicago. Why should big, bad Wal-Mart be so skittish? Why shouldn't they? Chicagoans already drive to Niles, Bridgeview and other close-in Wal-Marts. So the city, which just raised the sales tax rate, loses the revenue.

Some dishonorable mentions for this list:

*City Hall, which sold Block 37 for a bargain-basement $12.5 million in hopes of spurring its development.

*Trizec Properties Inc., which lost its management contract for Sears Tower worth an estimated $2 million a year.

*Ikea, whose decision to bypass Chicago sites for one in Bolingbrook looked suspiciously like retail redlining.

*Sam Zell's Equity Office Properties Trust, which swallowed a $229 million charge for buying California office buildings now mostly empty.

*Developer Robert Berliner Jr., who couldn't launch a planned high-rise on the Near West Side and is getting squeezed out of a condo project proposed just west of downtown.

A LOOK AHEAD: The national firm Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co. predicts that while demand for office and retail space will be spotty in 2005, investment activity will keep property values high. The firm said U.S. real estate will continue to be prized by foreign investors lured by the falling dollar. Also, pension funds have been boosting real-estate allocations in the name of cash flow.

The Urban Politician

December 29th, 2004, 06:16 PM

Wow, he even criticized Block 37. I guess I can't blame him. Lets face it--progress on that site has been pathetically slow.

I'm also dissappointed by that former Columbus Hospital site. Another reason why I continue to decry the city for allowing demolition of structures to occur before funding is found for future developments. I hope the same doesn't happen to the former Scholl Building

BVictor1

December 30th, 2004, 12:46 AM

- edit

LA1

December 30th, 2004, 07:59 PM

http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_thumb/31e96f0685cd459c1c4e6de32949531d.jpg

The Morgan, West Loop.

LA1

December 30th, 2004, 08:02 PM

I think it is time to start showing more of the infill in downtown and the other city hoods. There is alot more going than just skyscrapers.

Bigger pic-
http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/31e96f0685cd459c1c4e6de32949531d.jpg

Completion 2006.

LA1

December 30th, 2004, 08:05 PM

Buena Pointe-Uptown
http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/BUENAPOINTE.jpg

The Urban Politician

December 30th, 2004, 08:08 PM

Nice pics, LA. Where is the Morgan? Is it still U/C, pre-construction, or is it already completed?

LA1

December 30th, 2004, 08:47 PM

The Morgan is in West Town. I should have edited. I don't call it the West Loop. To me, anything west of the 90/94 is Greek Town or West Town. West Loop imo, is between the 90/94 and the river. It said the delivery is 2006, so I am assuming no construction yet or just started. West Town is booming with new construction, loft conversions, etc. Alot of great infill in that area. I will post more pics later.

Lofthaus on Sagamon-West Town
http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/dbf9f5aab4d8f156c73c8972958c3d83.jpg

The Metro on Monroe-West Town
http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/METRO.jpg

Sheridan Place-Uptown/Sheridan Park

http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/SHERIDAN_3rd.jpg

HowardL

December 30th, 2004, 09:44 PM

Speaking of infill. 156 West Superior (http://www.millerhull.com/html/progress/Chicago.htm) ( or here (http://www.156westsuperior.com/) ) has been proposed for a while now on the north side of Superior between LaSalle and Wells, but I walked by today and the rendering looks updated.
http://www.millerhull.com/images/in%20progress/Chicago_01.jpg
http://www.millerhull.com/images/in%20progress/Chicago_06.jpg
http://www.millerhull.com/images/in%20progress/chicago_02.jpg

Rivernorth

December 31st, 2004, 12:01 AM

wow! very modern! i love it!

BVictor1

December 31st, 2004, 12:46 AM

That design for 156 West Superior is SWEET! I'd like to see a taller version of that get built.

The Urban Politician

December 31st, 2004, 01:10 AM

Wow, what a building! Cutting-edge architecture is making its way back to the Chi

BVictor1

December 31st, 2004, 02:32 AM

There's an updated rendering of One Museum Park, and i'm bring that image over from SSP forum. What are you all's thoughts?

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/500/6525image4.jpg http://www.torchia.com/rc/images/OneMuseumPark.jpg

Well here are the two different renderings. The one on the bottom being the most recent design. I think that it is going to be an extremely interesting building. Personally I fell that they need to reduce some of the bulk near the top of the building the give the structure a bit more slender tower effect. But I still like it.

24gotham

December 31st, 2004, 04:23 AM

Buena Pointe-Uptown
http://www.atproperties.com/devImages/img_full/BUENAPOINTE.jpg

WHAT THE F*CK WERE THEY THINKING????
Could they have built a more hideous building? This piece of crap is absolutely architecturally bankrupt. What an incredible disservice to those who live in the Buena Park area to have to look at this thing every time they go by the intersection of Broadway/Sheridan and Montrose.

My problems with the building are as follows:

First: The color choice for the brick is about as bland, beige, and safe as you could choose, there is no color variation on the entire building except for the base.

Second: The windows are teeny tiny, Why would you use such small windows on a midrise building? The CHA does a better job with providing light within their units. We don't live in the Arctic Circle, We have the technology to have floor to ceiling glass, and still be energy efficient.

Third: Architecturally, it is simply boring, boring, boring. Especially on the western exposure, take a look at it from the Red Line, you'll see, there is about as much architectural intruigue as one would find in a trailer park in Arkansas (No offense meant to those living in trailer parks in Arkansas).

As you can tell, I have only a small feeling of hatred for that project, It simply amazes me that the city will approve something just to get a financial shot in the arm for a neighborhood.
There is a building a couple of blocks west on Montrose directly across from the cemetary which was completed about four or five years ago. Also a midrise, it is much, much better, in that there was actually some thought put into the design of the place, some variation of materials, and much bigger windows.

24gotham

December 31st, 2004, 04:27 AM

Speaking of infill. http://www.millerhull.com/images/in%20progress/Chicago_01.jpg

Love it, love it, love it. Why can't there be more of this, and why can't they build it so that those of us who are not wealthy can afford to live in such tasteful places?

simulcra

December 31st, 2004, 05:26 AM

Why can't there be more of this, and why can't they build it so that those of us who are not wealthy can afford to live in such tasteful places?

this is my stated life goal.

but that building is orgamiscally delightful. (yes! i managed to use that word in a sentence! orgasmically! "the family guy" has been corrupting my brain...)

The Urban Politician

December 31st, 2004, 06:12 AM

http://www.millerhull.com/images/in%20progress/Chicago_01.jpg

^okay, guys, help me out.

What is that on the ground floor. Please tell me it's not a garage door? This building would be ruined in my mind if that's a front-facing garage door at the base.

The Urban Politician

December 31st, 2004, 06:14 AM

Personally I fell that they need to reduce some of the bulk near the top of the building the give the structure a bit more slender tower effect. But I still like it.

^I don't know, BV. I don't mind bulk. In fact, bulk is part of Chicago's rough and tough heritage, and it would look good, rather than a more Manhattan-like sleek building.

Besides, Chicago has been building plenty of sleek in the past few years

BVictor1

December 31st, 2004, 06:19 AM

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2004-12/15656307.jpg
Statues are coming home: The 12-foot Greek goddess of agriculture, weighing 4.5 tons, is lifted from the Danada Forest Preserve in Wheaton.
(Tribune photo by Carl Wagner)

Ready to come home
Greek goddesses that last stood at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1929 will return next year

By John Biemer
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 30, 2004

Two 12-foot statues of Greek goddesses began their journey back to the Chicago Board of Trade on Wednesday when a crane hoisted them out of a DuPage County forest preserve and onto a flatbed truck.

The two robed statues, carved from blocks of pure granite, once stood on a ledge above the main entrance to the Board of Trade's 1885 building. But they were presumed lost when the building was demolished to make way for a new edifice in 1929.

The statues turned up in 1978, lying on their sides in grass, when the DuPage Forest Preserve District bought the former estate of Arthur Cutten, a wealthy CBOT grain trader in the early 1900s. For about the last decade, they've stood watch over the parking lot to the Danada Forest Preserve in Wheaton.

On Wednesday, contractors strapped the statues--each weighing about 4.5 tons--onto a truck and drove them to a warehouse in northwest Chicago. The Board of Trade will have them cleaned and hopes to install them flanking a fountain in the LaSalle Street Plaza in time for the 75th anniversary of its Art Deco-style building, which opened on June 9, 1930. The plaza is under renovation.

"A lot of people down at the Board of Trade are going to be happy to have them back," said Arthur C. West, the CBOT building's general manager.

CBOT paid for the move, which was done by Methods & Materials, a Chicago company that specializes in fine-art rigging and installation. The company declined to say what the move cost.

The ground beneath the statues was partially frozen, so workers had to jackhammer the dirt around the base to loosen it before lifting the figures with a crane. Straps were attached beneath the statues' bases in case there were any cracks in the stone, but Methods & Materials director Roger Machin said the statues appear to be in good shape. CBOT plans to have the statues assessed to find out who may have carved them, and how much they're worth.

One of the classically rendered goddesses represents agriculture--depicted leaning on a horn of plenty spilling out fruits and vegetables. The other represents industry--depicted next to the bow of a ship and an anvil.

How they ended up on the former Cutten estate, now Hidden Lake Forest Preserve in Glen Ellyn, is a mystery. The original CBOT building was hastily torn down because of structural problems, so officials speculate Cutten must have somehow taken them at that time.

The Board of Trade requested their return after learning about them in 2003 through a Forest Preserve District newsletter. In May, district commissioners voted unanimously to donate the statues to the CBOT, requesting that a plaque in the plaza describe their history and acknowledge that they were "graciously returned through the generosity of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

24gotham

December 31st, 2004, 06:20 AM

I just spent a bit of time on the website for 156 Superior and almost shot a wad.... The back of the building lower floor 1 bedroom units start at about $330K. They are only about 750 sq ft, but what an amazing 750 sq ft they are.
Someday, perhaps when I win the lottery (although I think you actually have to play the lottery to win, I'll have to check into that...).

BVictor1

January 2nd, 2005, 05:21 PM

WINTER ARTS PREVIEW 2005
Reflecting on park's lasting impact
Cultural mega-project transforms downtown, but has well run dry?

By Chris Jones
Tribune arts reporter
Published January 2, 2005

Millennium Park, the splashy cultural playground that exploded last summer above some old rail tracks, dominated 2004 in Chicago arts and culture. And Chicago's cultural leaders argue that the tentacles of this $450-million cultural mega-project astride Michigan Avenue will also be the big cultural story here in 2005.

The park's likely effect on the new year? A double-edged sword.

On the one hand, Millennium Park is widely perceived as representing the long-awaited arrival of a critical cultural mass in downtown Chicago.

Instead of a collection of restored -- but frequently dark -- old theaters and renovated but long-familiar museums, Chicago now has new, user-friendly fountains, sculptures and skating rinks that drip with arty cache. Yet kids and tourists also can frolic there. Day and night. For free.

In many minds, the vibrant new downtown park represents a spectacular and vital transformation of a city's core, and a populist tide that, especially given all the rhapsodic national press that has flowed its way, cannot help but raise all local cultural boats.

"There's a sudden new national awareness of what exists in downtown Chicago," says Roche Schulfer, the executive director of the Goodman Theatre. "It's not about the North Loop theater district anymore. It's about Chicago having a downtown cultural campus."

"It's going to be all about the park in the coming year," says Lois Weisberg, Chicago's commissioner of cultural affairs. "That's the big cultural draw."

But there's a downside. The construction of Millennium Park ate up a whopping $200 million in local arts philanthropic dollars. And it's seeking still more donated money in 2005 to fully establish its ongoing conservancy.

Some are starting to suggest that the local moneybags are in danger of being tapped out.

"Millennium Park," says John McCarter, president of the Field Museum, "took a lot of money out of the community."

And it's by no means over. Millennium Park charges no admission and has limited opportunities for revenue generation -- but it will rack up big, ongoing bills that someone will have to pay.

"Operational costs," Weisberg says, "are going to be very high."

Whether local philanthropic dollars can be measured in finite terms is open to question. Nonetheless, Chicago's perennial givers were, without question, pushed hard to contribute to the park. And because arts and cultural organizations have seemingly limitless needs, it would appear self-evident that some requests in 2005 will go begging -- especially the quotidian but necessary requests for infrastructure improvements.

The State of Illinois won't be picking up the slack. From Raven Theatre to the now-defunct Noble Fool Theater in the Loop, arts and cultural projects in Chicago have enjoyed the benefit of money from the Illinois First program over the last few years. But that program stopped dispensing new money at the end of Gov. George Ryan's term. And given the state of the Illinois budget, anything comparable is unlikely to return anytime soon.

City's budget woes

Meanwhile, the City of Chicago also has its own budget woes, replete with grumpy aldermen and unpleasant austerity measures. As compared with two or three years ago, very little cultural cash is sitting around City Hall.

One example of a growing problem area is the nine Chicago museums -- with aging buildings -- that make up the Museums in the Park consortium, funded in part by the Chicago Park District (the museums sit on Park District land).

When adjusted for inflation, Park District funding for the consortium has been dropping over the past decade. And in August, the Museum of Contemporary Art became the 10th member of the consortium. But the admission did not come with any new dollars attached -- merely vague promises and funding questions, leaving the museums struggling to cover their growing operating expenses.

Nonetheless, even as some institutions struggle for the money to keep the lights on, 2005 hardly wants for new arts projects in and around Chicago.

The biggest likely project is intimately connected to Millennium Park. In the coming weeks, the Art Institute of Chicago is expected to announce that it's finally ready to go ahead with its delayed expansion designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

"We hope to break ground on our building project later this spring," said Arts Institute President and Director James Cuno. "That will send us on a path to reopening an expanded Arts Institute in 2009."

The total cost according to Cuno: at least $280 million.

The new building -- which will have a main door on the same axis as the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park -- will make a new, more logical physical connection for visitors between the institute and the park.

"There's a synergy now between the park, the museum and the center of the city," Cuno says. "We have to maximize that benefit."

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance, located at the other end of the park from the Art Institute, also is in an expansion-minded mood for 2005. The venue plans to enter the arena of presenting music and dance acts itself, rather than merely renting space to local groups.

"We hope to present some major dance groups in the near future," says Michael Tiknis, the recently hired managing director. "Part of our mission is to expand the audience at the Harris."

But downtown isn't going to be the whole story this year.

On Chicago's North Side, the Victory Gardens Theater already has raised most of the $9 million needed to turn the old Biograph Theatre into a spiffy new performing arts center expected to open at the end of 2005.

And Chicago's dance community is expected to start reaping the benefits of an unparalleled $3.5 million injection of funds into Chicago dance over the last three years by the Chicago Cultural Trust.

Spreading the wealth

The money -- part of the so-called Dance Initiative -- went to a variety of local groups for both artistic and administrative needs. It's expected to pay off in several ways in 2005.

"Carrying out these plans should be a major activity in 2005 for many Chicago dance groups," said Sarah Solotaroff, senior adviser to the Chicago Community Trust. "Things are starting to take hold."

Chicago's theaters also are starting several new initiatives, including Internet sales through the League of Chicago Theatres and what league executive director Marj Halperin describes as "marketing in clusters," such as the recent North Shore Live! campaign promoting several theaters in the northern suburbs.

On the national scene, arts lobbyists don't expect a sudden new seat in the inner sanctum of a second Bush administration. But then again, they don't expect any new attacks, either.

Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of the lobbying group Americans for the Arts, cautions against artists seeing the election result as some kind of anti-arts Armageddon.

"I don't see a backlash coming against the arts," Lynch says of 2005, noting that fiscal support for the arts, at least, has not tended to break down along the predictable party lines. "The biggest increase in government arts funding in this country was in the Nixon administration. In Bush's second term, we see a scenario of moderate increases in federal levels of funding."

Chicago better off

Chicago is viewed as having a rosier outlook in the arts than most other American cities. "Chicago," says the newcomer Tiknis, who recently arrived here from Midland, Mich., "is the flagship city for realizing the link between the arts and economic development."

"When I talk to my colleagues in places like Philadelphia and St. Louis," McCarter says, "I realize how well off we are."

Arts organizations, of course, must respond to the socio-political world in ways that go beyond acquiring government funds. Cuno says that the events of the past year have convinced him that the Art Institute needs to make a major new initiative in the acquisition of art relating to Islam.

"We cannot pretend to be an encyclopedic museum," Cuno says, "without offering visitors more of an experience of the Islamic lands."

Not all of the arts events of the new year are likely to be as deep -- unless one is referring to pizza. The dawn of 2005 harbingers the arrival of the grand 25th anniversary of the Taste of Chicago. And in honor of the oft-reviled but hugely popular outdoor food fest, Weisberg says the city's Department of Cultural Affairs is planning a summer-long exploration of "the close relationship between art and food."

In more ways than one, 2005 will be a very good year for picnicking in a Chicago park.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

BVictor1

January 2nd, 2005, 05:23 PM

WINTER ARTS PREVIEW 2005: ARCHITECTURE
Artful expansions, exhibits abound

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published January 2, 2005

While there are no megaprojects like Millennium Park on the horizon, the coming months still have plenty of architectural events in store. They include a high-profile exhibition about the Art Institute of Chicago's planned expansion by Italian architect Renzo Piano and, in Minneapolis, the opening of a greatly expanded Walker Art Center.

There is much more to look forward to in Chicago, including the naming of winners in the city's lakefront bridge competition, a new office building along Wacker Drive, a new condominium tower along the lakefront, and the usual abundance of exhibitions.

Walker Art Center: One of the Midwest's cultural gems and a nationally recognized showcase for contemporary art, the Walker has doubled the size of its existing building in a project designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Seeking to redefine how contemporary art is presented, the design interweaves galleries, performance spaces, a cinema and other uses. The expansion opens to the public April 17.

Zero Gravity: The Art Institute, Renzo Piano, and Building for a New Century: In what seems a strong sign that the Art Institute of Chicago will proceed with the delayed $200 million expansion by Piano, the museum plans an exhibition about the project, including models, plans and illustrations. The show will be curated by museum president James Cuno and Martha Thorne, associate architecture curator, and will be suspended from the skylight structure above the museum's grand staircase. It is scheduled to open May 31.

1945: Creativity in Crisis: Architecture and Design During and After World War II: Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Art Institute will present an exhibition devoted to architecture and design during the 1940s, a decade often overshadowed by 1920s Art Deco and the International Style of the 1950s. Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman has designed a special installation for the exhibition, which runs from May 7 through Jan. 8, 2006.

Lakefront Bridge Competition: The City of Chicago in January will name winners of its international design contest for five new pedestrian bridges along Lake Shore Drive -- a replacement for the North Avenue Bridge, a new movable bridge across the Chicago River, and new bridges at 35th, 41st and 43rd Streets. Thirteen finalists were announced in December. The date on which the winners will be named has not been announced. The Chicago Architecture Foundation's exhibition on the competition, "Bridging the Drive," appears through Jan. 20 at the foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave.

The Lancaster: The first high-rise in the massive Lakeshore East project that is being built on a former urban golf course just west of Lake Shore Drive, this 29-story condominium tower was designed by Loewenberg + Associates of Chicago. With a facade of glass and concrete, it is advertised as an upgrade of Loewenberg's controversial concrete condominium towers in River North.

111 South Wacker: The latest in the parade of corporate towers along the north-south stretch of Wacker Drive, this structurally expressive, 51-story office tower was designed by Lohan Caprile Goettsch of Chicago. Its biggest design flourish is at its base -- a grandly scaled, highly transparent lobby whose ceiling is formed by the curving underside of a parking ramp inside the building. The building is expected to open next summer.

O'Hare International Airport Expansion: Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, designer of the greenhouselike United Terminal at O'Hare, continues to make his mark on the world's busiest airport. As part of the ongoing expansion of O'Hare, Jahn and his firm, Murphy/Jahn, have designed upgrades to the airport's Terminal 3. They include a new canopy along the airport's service road and a highly transparent glass exterior wall. The first of six phases in Terminal 3 is now complete, city officials say, and work on the rest of the project is ongoing.

Randolph Street Station: Another significant transportation project, this one designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago, the new passenger terminal opened in December with relatively little fanfare. It deserves a closer look because it forms an important gateway to the city. The underground station features a ceiling with a stainless-steel wave design and a blue terrazzo walkway.

New Federal Architecture: The Face of a Nation: The Chicago Architecture Foundation presents this traveling exhibition, which shows how the U.S. government has shifted from bland, nondescript design to more architecturally ambitious courthouses, federal office buildings and border stations. The exhibition opens Jan. 27 and appears through May 2.

Competition: Public Process for Public Architecture: Though not as commonplace as in Europe, architecture competitions are increasingly held in the United States to select architects for major projects. This exhibition explores the process of architecture competitions by displaying designs of past competitions and the entries in the current competition for a piece of public artwork that will form the centerpiece of a new Tribune Tower museum dedicated to examining the principles of freedom in America. The exhibition debuts Jan. 27 and runs through May 2.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune