Decided to take a stroll over to the new McDonalds tonigt (as it was opening day). I've got to say... I was pleasantly surprised. This thing feels so much bigger inside than it looks outside... it's quite the extravaganza. Anyway, here's some crappy cell-phone pics I snapped while I was there. Enjoy.

Exterior looking south across Ontario
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150501.jpg

One of the beautiful (IMO) curtainwall fasteners
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150502.jpg

Directly inside the main entrance
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150503.jpg

There are hundreds of plasmas and LCDs all over the restaurant
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150504.jpg

The lines weren't as bad as I expected... but, short they were not
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150505.jpg

The second floor looking southeast
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150506.jpg

More of the second floor
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150507.jpg

An interesting "walk through the decades" type area
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150508.jpg

Very odd ice-cream and pastry counter (reminds me of Fourbucks)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150509.jpg

The beginning of the "walk through the decades" (starting with the 00's)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150510.jpg

Another shot of the strange pastry counter
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150511.jpg

Looking west across the second floor (at the recently-turned Sports Authority)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150512.jpg

One of the "living room" style seating areas on the second level
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150513.jpg

Shouldn't every McD's have an escalator?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150514.jpg

These first-floor tables are awesome. They respond to touch by making "wave" patterns
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150515.jpg

The drive through was sheer insanity... it's going to make quite a mess of traffic on Ontario (which it already was at points)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150516.jpg

The exterior as seen on our way out the door
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/geoff_diamond/Chicago%20-%20Photographs/mcdonalds_04150517.jpg

WOW. That kicks-ass.

I was there as well yesterday. I have to admit, I was impressed. The "Walk through the Decades" was a bit cheezy, but they had some fun furniture which I can just picture being covered in ketchup and mustard by now. Actually, I was surprised by some of the furniture and lighting, as it is quite expensive stuff. Some pieces in the thousands of $$. Again, I just picture it with food stains, especially the "ball" chairs in the 70's area. I hope I am wrong...

After the tour, my friend and I went across the street to Portillo's for dinner.

Wow, first time seeing an escalator in a MCdonals. Wow, I have to visit it soon. IS the prices like other MCdonals or sky rocketed?

I have to admit I think the new McDonalds if fairly "neat." I've always pictured it as the ultimate freak show, especially from the outside, but I'm surprised and a bit relieved to see that it has some very unique features...not just the colorful cluster fuck I thought it was going to be to go along with everything else in that area of River North.

Wow, even though I haven't been there, those pictures look great. It's a HUGE improvement from that suburban Crap-n-roll McDonald's that used to be there.

Sure, even though there is a drive-though and a surface parking lot, this McDonald's seems to exude an urban flair that entices and adds life/vitality to the area in a way that's appropriate for that particular part of River North. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the Crap-n-roll McDonald's didn't have a pedestrian street entrance, right? This new store will be a success, I predict.

Next stop: demolish that ugly & cheap-looking Howard Johnson's motel downtown and replace it with a 55-storey megatower

Does anyone know where this one ranks in sq footage amoung McDonald's outlets? I didn't hear anything about it being the world's largest.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the old rock n' roll McDonald's was the highest grossing one in the US (and we all know how gross McDonald's food can be!); I would imagine this one would easily be earning the title.

With the HQ in Oak Brook and the association with Chicago, is McDonald's looking at this one as being some sort of flagship, or at least the signature McDonald's....or just a large, prominent store in a large, prominent city?

How large is th surface parking lot?

Does anyone know where this one ranks in sq footage amoung McDonald's outlets? I didn't hear anything about it being the world's largest.

Probably in maybe the top ten. I've been to the largest in Oklahoma City (road trip from Chicago to Austin) and this has NOTHING on that one.

Does anyone know where this one ranks in sq footage amoung McDonald's outlets? I didn't hear anything about it being the world's largest.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the old rock n' roll McDonald's was the highest grossing one in the US (and we all know how gross McDonald's food can be!); I would imagine this one would easily be earning the title.

With the HQ in Oak Brook and the association with Chicago, is McDonald's looking at this one as being some sort of flagship, or at least the signature McDonald's....or just a large, prominent store in a large, prominent city?

The old Rock and Roll McDonalds ranked 3rd in the US. The McDonald's in Times Square in New York was #1, and even that was only 3rd in the world. McDonalds in Tokyo and Moscow beat the NYC one out. The Rock n Roll McDonalds was 6th overall in the world. I dont see that changing much, honestly. But it might, who knows.

As for this new McDonalds.... eh. If they got rid of the surface lot to the west of the building, it just might be a nice developement.

any sources. I heard the largest was on an Highway in OK

any sources. I heard the largest was on an Highway in OK

the Tribune, back in Sept when the old Rock n Roll McDonalds was closed and demolished. And my stats were for profit grossing, not size.

The building seems to cut a nice figure for drivers on Ontario.

With the HQ in Oak Brook and the association with Chicago, is McDonald's looking at this one as being some sort of flagship, or at least the signature McDonald's....or just a large, prominent store in a large, prominent city?

I remember when the project was first announced, they made it a point to stress that they had never built a McDonalds like this one and they would never build another. It was the intent, since day one of the project, to make this the chain's flagship.

And why is it that I find it so hard to believe that there exists a McD's in OK that's bigger than this one? This thing is absolutely monstrous!

My question is, what to the bigger ones and Times Square or OKC look like?
Do they have plasma TVs, esclators, etc? I doubt it.

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

A Mickey D's on steroids
When super-sized isn't necessarily better

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published April 17, 2005


Just as the McDonald's restaurants of the 1950s expressed a buoyant, Space Age modernism, so the beefy new downtown McDonald's that made its splashy debut Friday delivers a telling statement about its time: The age of swelling McMansions, gargantuan, gas-guzzling SUVs and baseball players who bulked up by injecting themselves with steroids.

In this high-profile flagship restaurant at 600 N. Clark St., which holds down the western gate-way to downtown, the supersized meets the retro and the result is the ultimate Big Mac Attack -- a bloated version of the old McDonald's outlets and a colossal missed opportunity to lift this part of Chicago out of its theme park muck.

To be fair, the new McDonald's has its moments, and they range from the way its highly transparent glass facade creates a dazzling night-time beacon along Ontario Street to the furnishings in its surprisingly upscale interior, which lets burger munchers sit on reproductions of classic modern furniture, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's suave Barcelona Chair.

Given that Mies designed the chair as a kind of royal throne for the King and Queen of Spain, you have to wonder: How is Burger King going to top that? On the other hand, how is McDonald's going to prevent ketchup and pickles from trashing these regal chaises? (The company, based in west suburban Oak Brook, says it is fully intends to keep them clean.)

There is a serious side to this tragicomic tale: When McDonald's last year asked three top Chicago architects -- Helmut Jahn, Martin Wolf and Dan Coffey-- to cook up plans for replacing the landmark Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's that occupied the site for 20 years, it had a chance to write a new essay in innovation, one that would be as fitting for the start of the 21st Century as the midcentury McDonald's restaurants were for their time.

A tree-lined esplanade

Jahn, for example, suggested a curving steel-and-glass pavilion, set behind a nearly 100-foot-tall set of perforated metal Golden Arches on Clark. Cars would have slipped under one side of this giant "M," pedestrians the other. A tree-lined esplanade would have led those on foot to the two-story pavilion, where the latest in electric lights would have projected whimsical images, such as a Big Mac that disappeared with each successive bite. The design was wonderfully fresh, a transparent, multimedia spectacle that integrated the latest technology into a powerful aesthetic whole.

Instead, McDonald's threw out those plans and clung to the familiar look of its 1950s restaurants and their trademark Space Age features -- parabolic arches, a tilted, wedge-shaped roof, and glass windows canted upward and outward, like those in an airport control tower. The restaurants were principally shaped by Richard and Maurice McDonald and then adapted by Ray Kroc, the brothers' franchising agent, for the McDonald's he opened in northwest suburban Des Plaines in 1955. (Kroc later bought out the McDonald brothers and became the driving force behind McDonald's growth.)

It's easy to understand the company's decision to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Des Plaines McDonald's and, by implication, the genius behind its worldwide empire. Got a brand identity that millions of Baby Boomers love? Don't mess with it. But why not do something bold, especially in America's first city of architecture?

A lack of simplicity

Designed by Daniel Wohlfeil, McDonald's director of worldwide development, the new franchise outlet is burdened by the need to accommodate the company's old image with its new demands for space.

The statistics are telling: The Des Plaines McDonald's was a one-story, 900-square-foot structure with no indoor dining and no drive-through lanes. In this spartan setting, you went to the walk-up windows and ordered. In contrast, the new Chicago model has two stories of indoor dining for up to 300 patrons, two drive-through lanes and 24,000 square feet of space, including a cappuccino, espresso and gelato bar (McDonald's answer to Starbucks).

Simple and modestly scaled, it's not.

Wohlfeil has arranged the restaurant in three parts that logically descend in a tier from Ontario Street on the north to Ohio Street on the south: First, the blown-up version of the old McDonald's, which sports 60-foot-tall arches (more than double the height of the originals); then, a shorter midsection topped by a curving indoor seating area that looks out on a "green roof" of mulch, rocks and greenery; and finally, a tail end that duplicates the diminutive scale of the Des Plaines McDonald's, only it's been turned into a canopy for the drive-through lanes.

As urban design, the building's actually not so terrible.

The big pavilion holds down the Ontario-Clark corner, shaping a comfortable sidewalk space for pedestrians. (That's better than plopping down the restaurant like a spaceship in the middle of the block.) And the transparent, self-supporting glass walls, which are state-of-the-art, do more than allow the building to shine at night. They open the interior to the outside, taking advantage of skyline views and bringing the vitality of Chicago inside. That's a welcome departure from such nearby, inward-turning theme attractions as the hideous Rainforest Cafe, with the giant green frog on its roof. There, you enter a fantasyland shut off from the city.

The rest of the site is also attractively handled, with lots of greenery and handsome concrete pavers. There's even a handsome little glass pavilion, complete with an old red Corvette and other memorabilia from the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's, attached to a separate building where trash gets picked up. This is turning lemons into lemonade.

Grotesque, not cute

Yet as architecture, the new McDonald's is hardly Grade A, even though its arches really do some structural heavy-lifting, in contrast to the original McDonald's, where they were simply decorative features that offered the form, but not the function, of midcentury modernism.

The key problem is the shift in scale, which is a bit like taking a cute little '50s ranch house and blowing it up to twice its normal size. If you could actually do that, the ranch house would look grotesque rather than cute. And so it is with the new McDonald's.

As Philip Langdon wrote in his 1986 book "Orange Roofs, Golden Arches," the old McDonald's outlets had "a feeling of skyward momentum, symbolic of an aerospace age in which man could hurtle himself into the heavens." Here, however, what used to seem nimble and light comes off as blockbusting and weighty. Even details, such as the spider-shaped metal fixtures that hold the floor-to-ceiling glass walls in place, appear strangely oversize and clunky. This latest technology simply serves as garnish instead of being fully mixed into the architectural recipe.

The inside, which is designed to make patrons feel as though they're in a home, is more successful, though it unintentionally accentuates the very quality that has led McMansions (and this building) to grow to such an absurd size: the desire for endless expanses of luxurious internal space.

The ground-floor area, designed for fast turnover of seating, sets the tone with its large communal tables and their backlit onyx tops. But the real pop comes as you walk or take the escalator upstairs: A big cutout into the ceiling, oriented on a diagonal, leads you towards views of the John Hancock Center and nearby skyscrapers.

Some pros and cons

One problem: The building's overhanging canopy cuts off the tops of the towers. (Jahn's design, in contrast, had a big rooftop skylight that would have opened the building to the skyline). Still, once you sit down, the high-rises come into full view.

The absence of internal columns on the second floor, which is possible because the arches hold up the roof, creates an airy, free-flowing interior, yet not one that is so wide open that it lacks intimacy.

On the north side of the second floor, for instance, metal columns and horizontal wood slats create the equivalent of rooms within a room. The Barcelona chairs by Mies and other modern classics by the likes of the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier furnish these spaces. Though they create an incongruous mix of high culture and low, museum and commercial emporium (Mies in a McDonald's?), it's still good to see them because they signal McDonald's intent to bring a new sophistication to its restaurant interiors.

Other parts of the floor are done with similar flair, especially the curving seating area to the south, which features a decade-by-decade wall display of McDonald's history and furniture to match (including some very 1960s Egg Chairs).

All this is fun, but it's also, in the end, more nostalgic than of the moment, a way for McDonald's to shrewdly associate itself with classic design and thus underscore its advertising theme of "forever young." To truly stay forever young, however, you have to be willing to reinvent yourself. This project, sadly, turned out to be more about oversize recycling than bracing reinterpretation.

Next time, hold the nostalgia.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109889.jpg
Workmen install fascia at the top of the new McDonald's at Ontario and Clark Street in Chicago. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109890.jpg
Street activity is reflected in the angled windows of the new McDonald's as it goes up at the corner of Clark and Ontario. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109891.jpg
Work continues on the second floor counter at the new McDonald's. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109893.jpg
Workmen carry materials down one of the two escalators that lead to the upstairs dining area of the new McDonald's. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109895.jpg
As construction continues, audio-visual engineer Dave Paton uses the Wi-Fi network to connect to the Internet at the new McDonald's. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109897.jpg
The 1959 "Peggy Sue" Corvette, formerly on display at the Rock 'n Roll McDonald's, is now housed in a small glass-walled structure outside the new McDonald's. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109898.jpg
Diners on the second floor of the new McDonald's will be able to look out onto a roof garden and the city. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109900.jpg
A workman hangs over the edge as he installs fascia at the top edge of the new McDonald's. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2005-04/17109927.jpg
The new McDonald's as it nears the end of construction on the block bounded by Ontario, LaSalle, Ohio and Clark Streets. (Tribune photo by Charles Osgood)

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW
A Mickey D's on steroids
When super-sized isn't necessarily better

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published April 17, 2005

Just as the McDonald's restaurants of the 1950s expressed a buoyant, Space Age modernism, so the beefy new downtown McDonald's that made its splashy debut Friday delivers a telling statement about its time: The age of swelling McMansions, gargantuan, gas-guzzling SUVs and baseball players who bulked up by injecting themselves with steroids.

In this high-profile flagship restaurant at 600 N. Clark St., which holds down the western gate-way to downtown, the supersized meets the retro and the result is the ultimate Big Mac Attack -- a bloated version of the old McDonald's outlets and a colossal missed opportunity to lift this part of Chicago out of its theme park muck.

To be fair, the new McDonald's has its moments, and they range from the way its highly transparent glass facade creates a dazzling night-time beacon along Ontario Street to the furnishings in its surprisingly upscale interior, which lets burger munchers sit on reproductions of classic modern furniture, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's suave Barcelona Chair.

Given that Mies designed the chair as a kind of royal throne for the King and Queen of Spain, you have to wonder: How is Burger King going to top that? On the other hand, how is McDonald's going to prevent ketchup and pickles from trashing these regal chaises? (The company, based in west suburban Oak Brook, says it is fully intends to keep them clean.)

There is a serious side to this tragicomic tale: When McDonald's last year asked three top Chicago architects -- Helmut Jahn, Martin Wolf and Dan Coffey-- to cook up plans for replacing the landmark Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's that occupied the site for 20 years, it had a chance to write a new essay in innovation, one that would be as fitting for the start of the 21st Century as the midcentury McDonald's restaurants were for their time.

A tree-lined esplanade

Jahn, for example, suggested a curving steel-and-glass pavilion, set behind a nearly 100-foot-tall set of perforated metal Golden Arches on Clark. Cars would have slipped under one side of this giant "M," pedestrians the other. A tree-lined esplanade would have led those on foot to the two-story pavilion, where the latest in electric lights would have projected whimsical images, such as a Big Mac that disappeared with each successive bite. The design was wonderfully fresh, a transparent, multimedia spectacle that integrated the latest technology into a powerful aesthetic whole.

Instead, McDonald's threw out those plans and clung to the familiar look of its 1950s restaurants and their trademark Space Age features -- parabolic arches, a tilted, wedge-shaped roof, and glass windows canted upward and outward, like those in an airport control tower. The restaurants were principally shaped by Richard and Maurice McDonald and then adapted by Ray Kroc, the brothers' franchising agent, for the McDonald's he opened in northwest suburban Des Plaines in 1955. (Kroc later bought out the McDonald brothers and became the driving force behind McDonald's growth.)

It's easy to understand the company's decision to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Des Plaines McDonald's and, by implication, the genius behind its worldwide empire. Got a brand identity that millions of Baby Boomers love? Don't mess with it. But why not do something bold, especially in America's first city of architecture?

A lack of simplicity

Designed by Daniel Wohlfeil, McDonald's director of worldwide development, the new franchise outlet is burdened by the need to accommodate the company's old image with its new demands for space.

The statistics are telling: The Des Plaines McDonald's was a one-story, 900-square-foot structure with no indoor dining and no drive-through lanes. In this spartan setting, you went to the walk-up windows and ordered. In contrast, the new Chicago model has two stories of indoor dining for up to 300 patrons, two drive-through lanes and 24,000 square feet of space, including a cappuccino, espresso and gelato bar (McDonald's answer to Starbucks).

Simple and modestly scaled, it's not.

Wohlfeil has arranged the restaurant in three parts that logically descend in a tier from Ontario Street on the north to Ohio Street on the south: First, the blown-up version of the old McDonald's, which sports 60-foot-tall arches (more than double the height of the originals); then, a shorter midsection topped by a curving indoor seating area that looks out on a "green roof" of mulch, rocks and greenery; and finally, a tail end that duplicates the diminutive scale of the Des Plaines McDonald's, only it's been turned into a canopy for the drive-through lanes.

As urban design, the building's actually not so terrible.

The big pavilion holds down the Ontario-Clark corner, shaping a comfortable sidewalk space for pedestrians. (That's better than plopping down the restaurant like a spaceship in the middle of the block.) And the transparent, self-supporting glass walls, which are state-of-the-art, do more than allow the building to shine at night. They open the interior to the outside, taking advantage of skyline views and bringing the vitality of Chicago inside. That's a welcome departure from such nearby, inward-turning theme attractions as the hideous Rainforest Cafe, with the giant green frog on its roof. There, you enter a fantasyland shut off from the city.

The rest of the site is also attractively handled, with lots of greenery and handsome concrete pavers. There's even a handsome little glass pavilion, complete with an old red Corvette and other memorabilia from the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's, attached to a separate building where trash gets picked up. This is turning lemons into lemonade.

Grotesque, not cute

Yet as architecture, the new McDonald's is hardly Grade A, even though its arches really do some structural heavy-lifting, in contrast to the original McDonald's, where they were simply decorative features that offered the form, but not the function, of midcentury modernism.

The key problem is the shift in scale, which is a bit like taking a cute little '50s ranch house and blowing it up to twice its normal size. If you could actually do that, the ranch house would look grotesque rather than cute. And so it is with the new McDonald's.

As Philip Langdon wrote in his 1986 book "Orange Roofs, Golden Arches," the old McDonald's outlets had "a feeling of skyward momentum, symbolic of an aerospace age in which man could hurtle himself into the heavens." Here, however, what used to seem nimble and light comes off as blockbusting and weighty. Even details, such as the spider-shaped metal fixtures that hold the floor-to-ceiling glass walls in place, appear strangely oversize and clunky. This latest technology simply serves as garnish instead of being fully mixed into the architectural recipe.

The inside, which is designed to make patrons feel as though they're in a home, is more successful, though it unintentionally accentuates the very quality that has led McMansions (and this building) to grow to such an absurd size: the desire for endless expanses of luxurious internal space.

The ground-floor area, designed for fast turnover of seating, sets the tone with its large communal tables and their backlit onyx tops. But the real pop comes as you walk or take the escalator upstairs: A big cutout into the ceiling, oriented on a diagonal, leads you towards views of the John Hancock Center and nearby skyscrapers.

Some pros and cons

One problem: The building's overhanging canopy cuts off the tops of the towers. (Jahn's design, in contrast, had a big rooftop skylight that would have opened the building to the skyline). Still, once you sit down, the high-rises come into full view.

The absence of internal columns on the second floor, which is possible because the arches hold up the roof, creates an airy, free-flowing interior, yet not one that is so wide open that it lacks intimacy.

On the north side of the second floor, for instance, metal columns and horizontal wood slats create the equivalent of rooms within a room. The Barcelona chairs by Mies and other modern classics by the likes of the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier furnish these spaces. Though they create an incongruous mix of high culture and low, museum and commercial emporium (Mies in a McDonald's?), it's still good to see them because they signal McDonald's intent to bring a new sophistication to its restaurant interiors.

Other parts of the floor are done with similar flair, especially the curving seating area to the south, which features a decade-by-decade wall display of McDonald's history and furniture to match (including some very 1960s Egg Chairs).

All this is fun, but it's also, in the end, more nostalgic than of the moment, a way for McDonald's to shrewdly associate itself with classic design and thus underscore its advertising theme of "forever young." To truly stay forever young, however, you have to be willing to reinvent yourself. This project, sadly, turned out to be more about oversize recycling than bracing reinterpretation.

Next time, hold the nostalgia.

----------

bkamin@tribune.com



Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune


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What is wrong with large expanses of luxurious interior space?

I didn't think the designs by Jahn and the others were all that inspiring. Judging from the Tribune photos from Kamin's earlier piece about this, none of those designs had promise to be iconic the way this one does. This design says McDonalds without the sign; those didn't. I think the choice was clera. There may be flaws in this design, but the others didn't do any better. I am mystified by Kamin's implied criticism of the restaurant's size. This is supposed to be (a) flagship restaurant. It has to compete with 40+ story buildings in the neighborhood for attention. The previous R'n Roll McDonalds was woefully undersized by comparison.

That looks awesome. I hope they roll these out to other cities as flagships.

is this McDonalds one of its kind, or other major cities have one of these just like Chicago too?

when i was in paris i wanted to see what a mcdonalds looks like in europe to see how it differed from american ones that i've been to (seriously i was) and they didn't have exactly this type decor or style of a place but they did have lcd screens playing music videos and some upscale furniture and second floor seating.

also doesn't the mcdonalds on fifth ave in new york have a esculator? i heard that was supposed to be the most poshed out place mc donalds. i heard the interior is like a five star restaurant or something like that. i may be wrong though but i thought i saw it on some history channel thing.

^^^no, but it is 2 levels. its not much to look at on the inside... very crowded, with a small staircase in the back that leads to the upper level. good views of times square though. the outside is VERY brightly lit, with a giant McDonalds sign as well. but the interior pales in comparison to the new McDonalds here in Chicago.

is this McDonalds one of its kind, or other major cities have one of these just like Chicago too?

one of a kind. this one is it.

when i was in paris i wanted to see what a mcdonalds looks like in europe to see how it differed from american ones that i've been to (seriously i was) and they didn't have exactly this type decor or style of a place but they did have lcd screens playing music videos and some upscale furniture and second floor seating.

also doesn't the mcdonalds on fifth ave in new york have a esculator? i heard that was supposed to be the most poshed out place mc donalds. i heard the interior is like a five star restaurant or something like that. i may be wrong though but i thought i saw it on some history channel thing.

If you're looking for a poshed out McDonald's you have to go to Rome to the location in the Spanish Steps area. It is all marble with a classical fountain inside. It's as if someone opened up a Mickey D's inside one of the Halls of Versailles.