I love the quotes from residents who claim "this is the first I have heard of this", or "they tried to sneak this past us, very deceptive". This is the exact reason why the general public should have as little say as possible regarding future development. This project has existed for 2-3 years, with the hotel being swapped for residential months and months ago... why must others be held accountable for the residents inability to stay up to date regarding their own neighborhood?

What is it with the West Loop residents? These people are such idiots it infuriates me! I agree that their ignorance about the existence of a project from 3 years ago is their own problem and they are way too late to have anything to say about it. How the hell is a 20 story building too tall for them when one of America's tallest buildings is a few blocks away? The streets of that neighborhood are usually devoid of foot traffic and desperately need more density to help the local small businesses. I will never understand why people move to what is basically downtown Chicago and suddenly want all the newer development to be suburban scale and style. They got their ugly big box grocery store and parking lot to drive to but heaven forbid a twenty story apartment building too. They say they want jobs but they don't want density to help the local businesses that are already there. They've got their luxury apartments in formerly empty warehouses and buildings that have been built very recently and suddenly the neighborhood is too crowded for more. It's so hypocritical and just baffles me. It's just so bizarre to me that this same thing keeps happening over and over in a neighborhood that should be full of pro- urban pro- density residents.

And the apartment tower can be built still...they don't seem to like that. The alderman seemed to try getting through to them that it doesn't really make a difference since a tower will eventually go there regardless.

This....

Ok, good i thought I was seeing things. Looked like a souped up WTP to me too.

This is idiotic. As if the original Booth Hansen design wasn't stupid enough, this is a completely new circle of architectural hell. How does Antonuvich get so much work, even if it is speculative??

Ok, that's impressive, if anything for the size of the project. Design can, and most certainly should change though.

Has there been any talk of development at the old Lakeside Medical Center Library site? Walked past it yesterday and couldn't believe there was such a large blank site in the middle of Streeterville.

Can it?

How does zoning work with that? If a site is zoned for a hotel, can a residential project of equal height be built instead without a zoning change?

Depends on the exact details of the approved PD.

Much agreed. This is the problem with aldermanic prerogative (aldermen essentially serve as the de facto urban planners in this city, as ridiculous as that sounds). Which leads to this type of utter nonsense, and I'll try to paraphrase someone - was it Viva? - who once said something on these hallowed pages such as 'planning by mob rule' or similar, which I think is a great description. And thus you have some mope like Burnett say things in public like - and again I'll paraphrase - 'well it seems like 'yall against this, so that's the end of the meeting......but it can still be built' wtf!? That's how this city supposedly 'works'?? Nice way to plan and approve growth in the nation's third largest city and second largest downtown.....

I remember that early on in the planning, it was apartments, then switched to hotel, and now back. Hopefully Taxman and his attorney were smart enough to get the language in there that allowed the flexibility between hotel and apartments for the tower based on market conditions. As I've mentioned before, it was always silly to think this was viable for a hotel (it's possible they could have landed a flag and financing for it, but only in the sense that in life anything's possible.....it was always unlikely and much, much more unlikely and unrealistic than apartments).......

I'd love to see the language of the pd still allow the tower to be built as apartments, and this get shoved down the miserable throats of the wlco west loop nimby dimwit club....

Maybe he has cut-rate fees for cut-rate work?? At any rate, I hope everyone realizes that none of these fanciful plans by the current owner of the old post office are real.....it should be obvious, but just in case it's not to anybody - this is all just a ploy.......this guy isn't even smart enough apparently to make the slightest effort to make one of these 'vision' (and I use that word very loosely here) plans look remotely realistically or feasible, let alone, good!

You're right, they're not interested in your patronage. Businesses, or residential buildings, that omit parking have made the rational decision that it costs more to provide parking than the revenue they get from you and other car-driving customers. This isn't social engineering, it's pure economics.

This is why we're all in favor of abolishing parking minimums. The city shouldn't be requiring landowners to build unprofitable parking when that parking occupies valuable space. Parking maximums - restricting developers' ability to provide parking - is another thing entirely in terms of property rights. I think regulating site plans is a better way to reduce the impact of parking in the city.

In the case of the hotel, on-site parking occupies valuable space and requires costly structural upgrades to the proposed building. Many visitors arrive in Chicago without cars, and valet parking exists to serve the travelers that do have cars.

^ Same here, but I wonder why the developers went back to the community to have a meeting if the language already allows them to build apartments as of right?

There's a rather lively conversation going on over here if anyone wants to jump in and interact directly with the mindless west loop opposition.

At a minimum he can shove the parking underground and take that vertical space for residental, reducing the overall height of the building but not the unit count and thereby stay within the underlying zoning (IIRC, something that still can be done even with the PD). The proposed tower is 200ft and the zoning limit is 155 so as long as it's compliant there is nothing they can do.

There is going to be a pretty decent sized building there regardless.

Edit: Alternately they can wait a while and eventually find a hotel operator then build to the hilt of the PD while flipping the neighborhood the bird.

As a former West Loop resident and current West Loop worker I want to buy one of these every time I hear them spout the same old crap and really give them something to complain about:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Xeqk8ZPAg9...Dynamite_1.jpg

I love this, I hope it happens.

^ It won't