our building boom is producing alot of quality midrise infill in westloop...a handful of very nice towers...a handful of forgettable towers...a signature tower with Vista...alot of downsized would be signature towers in pipeline if they come to fruition.. spire site, wolf point site..wouldn't be surprised with tribune site to be in that list... i just dont think we will ever see a Sears tower sized building (height wise) in this city again because of lack of sites that have that demand for something large and where people want to be are dwindling and developers are playing it safe with the smaller towers for these prime sites (600ft to 900ft).

^ you're still typing that smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest skycraper buidling booms the city has ever witnessed. 4 towers >800' currently U/C, with a a 5th on the way shortly (that's never happened before, ever, in the entire history of chicago).

and then you throw in plans for the 78, lincoln yards, riverline, 400 NLSD, Trib addition, NEMA II, LSE site I, 1000M, etc. and it becomes crystal clear to me that chicago is absolutely still making big plans.

a disappointing height outcome for wolf point south does not change that reality. it just demonstrates that some are getting spoiled.

Actually 2 more > 800 footers are on the way soon. Salesforce and OCS

yes, but i was speaking of imminent projects.

salesforce is still at least a year away from construction according to what has been reported (Q1 2020).

^ Most of our tallest new towers are residential now. Texas has never been a place where highrise living was desirable, so its skylines are at the total mercy of the office market and its desire (or lack thereof) to build marquee towers.

In fact, Chicago is really the outlier in the US for that one, along with NYC, Miami and (sorta) SF, but as noted recently, we don't have anywhere near the scarcity of land those cities do, so it's got to have a big cultural factor also.

I still think we are under performing ..call me spoiled but when i see NYC having like 12t o possible 15 towers over about 1000 ft or higher going up...basically about 3 times the amount of all our buildings UC at 600 ft plus i cant wonder why Chicago isn't building atleast a 1/3 whats going up in NYC..throughout its history chicago was alwasy about half ( or less) of what NYC was buiilding (buildings over 500ft)...if they had 20 buildings over 500ft being built Chicago was about 10... feel like NYC just exploded with the construction on another scale and were just doing OK relative... Thats why i get upset with super prime sites like wolf point just getting 800 ft is such a letdown..what type of prime property can warrant a super tall then?

^ chicago is doing great. Better than ever, in fact.

It was new york that was underpreforming until recently. Land values are an order of magnitude higher in prime manhattan. Chicago never should have been close to sniffing even half of nyc's skyline.

Now, chicago is chugging along, doing what's it's always done, throwing up giant towers when it has no real reason to be doing so and new york has finally lived up to the potential created by its extreme wealth and extreme land crunch and has entered the stratosphere.

If you can only measure chicago's skyline success against what new york is doing, then you are going to be forever wallowing in self-pity. New York has left chicago in its dust, chicago will not ever again be anywhere remotely close to NYC in the skyline department.

Part of it is the difference in land values, which pressure NYC buildings to go taller, all else equal. For example, one of those 1000+ towers in NYC is 111w57, which at a height of 1428 ft will have ~316000 square feet of space. Wolf Point East, which will be less than half as tall at 629 ft, will have almost exactly twice the square footage (628500). Vista is ~1200 feet tall, and has almost 5x the square footage of 111w57.

Building a supertall, superskinny tower like 111w57 is a really expensive way to get revenue-generating square footage. If you aren't space constrained like NYC, it makes a lot more financial sense to build less tall but on a larger lot. Of course I'm cherry picking a bit, but I think it's a good illustration. It's not that Chicago isn't having a building boom, it's that our building boom isn't as squeezed into narrow needle towers.

^ Great point

Chicago definitely has plenty of reasons to build skyscrapers

I think 9/11 lowered NYC's skyscraper morale for a little while, but it was only a matter of time before it came roaring back with a vengeance. As far as the NY-Chicago comparison, I find both extremely impressive on a global scale but NY is obviously a *much* bigger city with a much bigger global influence and barely any space to grow, so it's a no brainer.


Actually I read it and didn't care, and assumed the same thing, shocking right? Why do I always get singled out?

chicago is a boutique city. A larger SF without the natural beauty

I'm not sure what that stats are but when it comes to skyscrapers, high-rises, is there really any city in the country that's experiencing a building boom in the magnitude of Chicago, outside of NYC? Honest question

Man we must be spoiled, with so many 800+ footers under construction or in the pipeline. Any city would be in awe of such a feat.

I know that Seattle has built a lot of highrises recently, though none of them are supertalls.

Never heard anyone say that before. :???:

WAT. It's easily in the top 8 GDPs of the world, how's that boutique?... This might be the dumbest thing I've heard on this forum.


In other news RE the NYC supertall boom. Yes their land values are so much more expensive, a whole other league. Also Manhattan is land constrained, while in Chicago we can almost infinitely build out. The River West project, Lincoln Yards, Riverline, the 78, etc. are all open for business. In NYC they had to figure out how to build over rails to create Hudson Yards--there's almost no corner left untouched. We still have parking lots in the Loop & RN (although many are being filled).

Not sure what you mean Chicago is substantially larger than SF and ever heard of lake Michigan is consider that natural beauty.

I would add that skyline superiority is, of course, in the eye of the beholder... unless your barometer is strictly height and numbers. I saw a nationwide survey (I can't recall where) a year or so ago, and Chicago was deemed to have the superior skyline to New York based upon balance, symmetry, beauty, etc. Granted that survey could have been an out-lier but you get my point -- its largely subjective. To my knowledge Chicago has NEVER matched New York tower for tower. What it did do was build a taller tower than New York.... in fact, the tallest tower in the world. That one tower alone (rightly or wrongly) shot the Chicago skyline past New York in the eyes of many in the world. Build the tallest tower in the land again, and I submit to you that the result will likely be the same.

So, in short, if you want to compete with New York, get out of the tower for tower game... and go higher. Is that likely? The optimist in me says, "yes," .... it might be 20/30 years from now but I do believe that there will come a time when a developer will come along with the vision and financial wherewithal to pull it off.

And had it not been for the last recession..................

Double-check some of that data. I think WPE is somewhere between 900,000 and 1 mil sq ft.....I’ve seen height figures that are a bit higher as well...
Not that this impacts your point, obviously....

In addition to the vast difference in underlying economics, a lot of the financing behind the construction of those types of condo units in NY were essentially predicated on a continual pipeline of foreign buyers (many with questionable asset sources, to put it courteously) paying ever-higher prices....there’s a reality check incoming in that part of the market....

if you're talking about towers >800', then no.

if you lower the threshold down to 500', then metro miami is currently outbuilding chicago.


500+ footers currently U/C according to SSP:

NYC - 40 (includes jersey city)
miami - 12 (includes sunny isles beach & hollywood)
chicago - 8
los angeles - 8
seattle - 5
san francisco - 4

^ Do you have comparable data about total highrise construction (12+ stories?)

Just curious--don't bother if it's too much work

construction data for anything below 500' is generally WAY to incomplete/inconsistent to make for any kind of meaningful apples to apples comparison.

In the last 20 years Chicago has built ~223 buildings 12 floors or higher (as per CTBUH data). . . that's more buildings than the entire skylines of cities like Houston, Atlanta or Dallas. . . seems to me like Chicago is doing quite well. . . and we've got infinitely better pizza. . .

. . .

As far as I can tell, "Boutique City" is not even an existing or recognizable term, so congratulations on creating a new word! Even though it doesn't apply to Chicago. At all.

Also, out of morbid curiosity, what do you consider "natural beauty?"

I'd answer this with some pics, but it would probably get me in trouble.....
:naughty:

Drive down 290 or 294 in the suburbs and tell me Chicago is a "botique city". If endless miles of giant warehouses l, factories, and train yards is botique I guess we are botique.


Also if the second largest CBD in the country is "botique" then my favorite botique is Target since it's smaller than Walmart....

Ew, no.

:D

Chicago must be the most active city, construction wise, with a declining population. It's amazing how so much is built, when the population of the city and state is dropping so fast.

The Principle of Rhythm - Everything flows out & in; everything has its tides; all things rise & fall; the pendulum swing manifests in everything. For every inhale, an exhale.

The city of Chicago will do very well in the future.

Yeah, take my words as no insult to Chicago, I love the city, and happy to see the population growing in the core. I think it's a correction that's worthwhile, as people abandon the less desirable, distant parts of the city.

Declining Population =/= Declining Economy

Just ask Calcutta....

Anyhow, amazing how much people have trouble comprehending that concept

NY/NYC takes the top ranking there probably. Most expesive places have negative population growth.

The construction is happening downtown, which is not declining at all in terms of population.

Some less desirable parts of Chicago are though, yes.

Not sure where you heard this, I've recently heard NY is growing faster than expected every year.

In Schaumburg news:

Schaumburg mulling big parking garage for convention center area
Schaumburg officials are proposing a six-story, 1,100-space parking garage to serve the Schaumburg Convention Center and Renaissance Hotel as well as new businesses that could join a planned entertainment district nearby. The garage would include ground-floor retail and cost between $30 million and $33 million. [Daily Herald]

Let’s take a SSP field trip there!

New York has negative net domestic migration. But such figures usually don't consider births or international migration.

https://www.luxurychicagoapartments....ts-in-chicago/

This has some interesting nuggets of information:

As we near the end of the year, Costar Data is reporting a record number of apartments were delivered and absorbed in 2018. In the first three quarters of the year, 9,500 units were absorbed, while 7,000 new apartments were delivered. Not surprisingly leading the charge in absorption and delivery are the Class-A luxury apartments in downtown Chicago.

First, rent growth experienced a re-acceleration in 2018, with pricing continuing to trend upwards. Costar expects this trend to continue, which is positive for apartment developers. However, do expect seasonality to play a part in pricing fluctuations during the year as Chicago is the most seasonally impacted market in the country. Luxury Living Chicago Realty can attest to this as we are currently feeling the effects of this phenomena and do every year. However, we also anticipate pricing to trend upwards as we move into the first and second quarters of 2019.

Secondly, apartment concessions are real and will remain in place as Chicago continues to see a surge in supply. This is good news for renters who have grown used to receiving some sort of concession when renting. Costar is reporting 35% of apartments currently for rent have some type of concession, whether it’s a month free, or some other financial incentive for the renter.

does anyone know/have theories as to why this is?

and it's not just the rental market but also the property sale game too.

when we bought our new home a year ago last november, our real estate agent told us "if you guys don't buy this place, i think i might because i can easily flip this property as is for an additional $30 - 40K in the spring market." so we bought it.

granted, that was super-motivated sellers going through a divorce who just wanted to clear the property of their books so they could both move on with their lives, so we were able to drive a pretty hard bargain with them, but why this huge seasonal fluctuation in property value that is apparently larger than any other market?

That's a good question, I think it's just driven by cold weather and less people looking during these months. I agree it's strange.

On the rental side, it could have to do with people spending summers in Chicago. Apparently it is common for students from Ireland:

Anecdotally, I know a baby boomer couple who lives in La Grange, but rented an apartment in the city for the summer.

The holidays too, I think people are just less likely to look for housing during the holidays and winter.

but wouldn't boston, NYC, detroit, minneapolis, etc. deal with these exact same things?

why is it that the chicago apparently has the largest seasonal fluctuations of any market? is it just part of the culture here?

it seems so weird to me that a property might increase/decrease in value by tens of thousands of dollars just because of the season.

i've bought and sold a number of properties over the past decade, and all i've ever heard from real estate people is "buy in the fall, sell in the spring".

There might be considerations given school calendars, but I don't see why those wouldn't exist in other places as well.

Good question. I didn't realize that it's more pronounced here.

Exactly.

I always hate having vacant apartments in the dead of winter, often very hard to fill. People just don't like to move when it's frozen tundra outside, not that I can blame them

Not to give Schaumburg too much credit, but in theory a centralized parking garage could allow that area to be redeveloped in a more walkable fashion, more like downtown Naperville than the suburban hellscape we're used to seeing in Schaumburg.

The Motorola campus across Meacham is getting redeveloped too, the developers there are at least paying lip service to walkability and urban design but the buildings unveiled so far are more of the same suburban junk. Maybe more like suburban Dallas than what we've seen so far in suburban Chicago, but still junk.

^ Well, if our burbs are gonna survive they need to compete with suburban Dallas, not with downtown Chicago.

Besides, as we discussed many times before, we have a downtown Chicago. Dallas, et al doesn’t and never will.

I've said it before, but thriving suburbs are critical to Chicago's future, just as much as a thriving downtown is. A bustling city core need not eschew it's outlier areas, because those outlier areas help pump a lot of money into said city core. The question becomes how best to enhance the suburbs so that they are better connected to the City (and not solely the downtown area), while simultaneously making them denser, more sustainable, more walkable, more affordable, and more contemporary.

Anybody watch that HGTV show Windy City Rehab?

The lady is a bit intense, but casts a neat light into flipping homes in the local real estate

Yes! I find it to be one of the better examples of this type of show (although I'm certainly biased).