I kind of miss the little "hat" on top.

I don't think it's too bad.

Reality is, not every building needs to elegantly meet the street in Jane Jacobs-esque fashion. That is certainly appropriate in some places, but in others I don't think it's really necessary.

In the world of cars, delivery vehicles and taxicab waiting lines, some facades of a building need to serve a different purpose than being cute. Even in a big, bustling, pedestrian city like Central Chicago.

Even in the art deco era certain facades of buildings essentially presented a blank limestone (albeit somewhat decorated) wall to passersby.

^^ I"m with you on that. No one is going to be using that street except to go to the hotels. The livelier corner needs to be the one near the Sheraton entrance, which is how they have designed it. Now, whatever is built facing Illinois St. best have retail facing the RiverEast stuff; that would help both that complex and the stuff to the east.

I am sorely disappointed with the east, fronting N. New Street. dismal.

New Street is a glorified alley, so I'm okay with the building placing service functions along that side and Lower North Water. Park Drive is the public face and the motor court should not be there.

Adrian, the lowrise portion preserves the Ogden Slip view corridor so that the Wrigley/Tribune combo is visible from the lakefront (this is written into the massive Cityfront Center PD that governs this area). The little green swath on the ground next to it is temporary landscaping on the Hanover site that this developer is adding to appease SOAR.

Could someone please help me out here! Are this images the new renderings or is the other project with the darker blue, the one that is hopefully going to be built?

^ Your question was essentially answered in the ensuing posts that you, once again, ignored.

Can people be banned for being incredibly annoying? I vote to BAN this guy...

What is wrong with you?

Can't I asked a simple yes or no question...
Calm down!!! & sorry if i repeated the question, I'm only human..

New St is an alley. It's entirely service side. The Sheraton side is fine, it's essentially a vehicle turnaround. The focus here is nothing to do with those sides and everything to do with Colombus

Let me just say we have many big buildings in this city that successfully meet the street. I don't know why any should be granted an exception.

I do use Columbus to go home at times so I wouldn't say "no one"

10-23

http://imageshack.us/a/img717/984/whaah.jpg

Nice looking tower, I hope this starts soon.

Currently have some old rip/rap exposed (from when the slip went this far west) as well as clulsters of pilings (with the foundation caps removed).

From Curbed Chicago:

http://blog.chicagoarchitecture.info...=Google+Reader

I saw this article and think it may be misleading. When the first heavy equipment rolled onto this site several months ago (8/1), it seemed that site prep had begun, as opposed to construction in earnest. For like 3 months or more I have watched them dig, find thorium, surround it with an orange snow fence, and the remove that area in the fence in white bags. This article reads like they just found the thorium recently and now the project is on hold.

That said, for the last several weeks of this project they machines have all turned on at 8am sharp, but part of last week and this week, no work has been done on the site. I initially took it as they finished their Thorium cleanup and are waiting for caisson rigs to roll onto site, but maybe something different is going on? Anyone with inside info?

^Correct. . . this is one of the known Lindsay Light Co., sites this map shows it 'hot'. . .

http://www.cityofchicago.org/content...leMap61510.pdf

http://www.epa.gov/Region5/cleanup/l...ive-201204.pdf
This has probably already been discussed earlier in the thread. . . but if not it shows the EPA document dated April of this year. . .

. . .

Site Prep
 

Not only do they have the contaminated soil to truck off but there are a number of things that still need to be pulled out of the clay. For the W=A project (465 N Park) a large vibrator was brought in to pull the old sheet piles, same trick is used for the wooden piles when they are intact enough.

More of the old slip and turnaround ?


Clusters llike this were capped with concrete and served as the foundation.





And from months past
one of 2 large tanks


Fairly modern re-bar from the "holding tanks"


Old limestone foundation wall.

^ wow. lot's of stuff on that site

2008 - N Lot
 

Pulling old sheet piles - other 1/2 of the turnabout at the (old) end of the slip which sits between North Pier and the Spire site.


Vibrator


Sheet Piles


Wood Pilings

Great shots, Harryc. Just curious, for a project of this scale, how much does soil "cleanup" and old foundation removal increase the budget of the project?

They were loading up the bags-o-dirt today onto a flatbed for removal.