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Old Posted Mar 23, 2012, 6:06 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Chicago
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Other interesting info from the SOAR meeting:

-They expect to begin soil remediation on the site this June, although when the developer gave this answer the architect seemed surprised it would be so early (for whatever that is worth).
-They expect foundation work to begin at the end of 2012. The project is scheduled to open in the summer of 2015.

-The do not have a contract with the expected hotel brand, however they did say that they were very close. The developer said that he had hoped the deal would have been done before this meeting so he could have disclosed the hotel brand. He did give some clues about who the hotel brand might be. He said:
-The hotel portion of the building would be purchased by the hotel brand, not leased or run by the developer.
-The hotel would be 4 diamond (4-star?).
-The hotel brand is a publicly traded company and that hotels are are small percentage of their total business.
-The hotel brand currently only has about (from memory) 7-8 hotels in the US and another 4-5 internationally.

-The city and the project have a desire to renovate Ogden Plaza (the clock park west of the site), but they have hit a snag with the owner of the parking lot below the park.

-Kinda off the topic of this building, but there were several questions from residents about the parcel of land that is just north of this site. Mostly they said that they have no knowledge of the plans for that site, however at one point Alderman Reilly jumped in and said that he has seen no plans come across his desk for the development of that parcel. There were some other clues about what they know however. When asked about what land 435 N Park might use for it's laydown area for the duration of the project, the developer said that they have a relationship with the owner of the parcel to the north and barring them starting their own development soon, they would use that land for laydown. Also, the Architect stressed that they have designed a fully exposed facade on the North side in the event that a building is not built to the North for a while. Finally, the landscape architect said they have provision in their plans for additional trees and landscaping on the North side of 435 in the event that the development of the site to the North does not happen for while (although he did say it would be scrapped if that site moved forward).

This was my first community meeting on a new project and overall I thought it was pretty interesting, although most of the info we have already seen in the released sketches. I was hoping for a more heated debate, but overall everyone was pretty civil.

P.S. One more, sorta off topic tidbit was from an answer by the Alderman about any traffic studies on the recently dangerous intersection of Illinois and Columbus. He said they have a study and mentioned that one of the options is to lower the speed limit on Columbus in that area. Another option was to narrow Columbus to naturally reduce speeds.