They've already released a preliminary rendering of their plan for the site:

https://i.postimg.cc/prhvgJ1T/old-1000-s-michigan.jpg


:D




In any event, this news should surprise no one. This project always seemed a bit overly-aggressive, and with all of the uncertainty of Covid thrown in.......

And I still feel that base would have been awkward on the Michigan Ave streetwall. I was mainly excited about the height of 10000M, and how it would've helped tie the skyline together.

Good news! They were secretive and shady from the start and made me look dumb when I claimed the project was dead as a proposal. Looks like they just tried to push past the fact their financing was trash and did it anyway. With or without COVID, this tower wasn't going to succeed. They merely had a convenient excuse after scamming people of their time. Hopefully they can get their money back

Real shocker, this news.


I'd meant to post re that Realdeal article from a couple months ago, which clearly erroneously reported that GS had provided $470 mil in financing. That was obvious nonsense, and I suspect what happened is that that rag, which in no small part just 'piggy-backs' off actual reporting, largely recycled a Crain's (or Trib - can't remember which) article which happened to mention some sort of GS financing, along with a price tag on the project of $470 mil. So what does Realdeal do? Reports that GS is providing $470 mil of financing for the project. Yeah....no. My guess - and this is just a guess but seems to fit - is that GS may have been providing some sort of bridge financing - or something with similar effect - to kick-off construction until the developers were finally able to get their act together and put together complete project financing. Reminiscent of Teng-Waterview (although I can quite recall the details in terms of who was actually financing that project at the start).....

Let's hope the future developer will keep the +800ft height figure in mind

unfortunate but we all know here that the rule of thumb is if there hasn't been an announcement of secured FULL financing for a project of this size being prior to construction that something is up and the developer is playing with fire to start construction. It sucks because it seems like some really good projects are lost ...particular the waterview tower proposal...that one was really great and such a tease because it was up about 20 stories or so too... :(

I highly doubt it from the past experiences we have seen developers in the city try to capitalize with the minimum amount of expense on partially completed sites...there will be little vision most likely...just look at the spire site...had a giant hole in ground with foundation work done for a huge building and instead they go safe.

What are the better odds of being completed, 1000M or another hard luck development, Hudson Tower in Detroit. My, my, my,, hard to let this one go,but another setback for 1000M. I know it sounds futile but yet hoping.

Work has resumed at the Hudson site, albeit at a snails pace.

I knew it! Waterview all over again. The boom is over!

Developer, as far as I can tell.

Those damn kids downstairs with their spreadsheets, calculating what's most profitable instead of what's manliest.

I still think that had the condos' price tags been 30% or even 20% lower, many more units would have been sold, which would have made it much easier to secure funding. The 1000M folks are victims of their own greed. They wanted unrealistically huge profit margins.

:rolleyes:

Clueless

Why do you say that?

I happen to have been shopping for a Chicago condo for a while, so I wrote my previous post from the perspective of a potential buyer. 1000M's prices are just not competitive. For instance I mentioned recently that Cirrus has significantly better prices, despite being just as "luxurious". Had 1000M's units been more reasonably priced, I might have signed a contract already. The Chicago Tribune article linked to yesterday mentioned that only 101 of 421 units had been sold, or 24%. If I remember correctly, the percentage of sold units was already around 20% a year or so earlier, suggesting that the announcement of construction (official groundbreaking was in late Oct 2019) didn't stimulate sales very much. If the condos had been selling like hotcakes, I doubt that Goldman Sachs would be concerned about the viability of this project.

Because you lost me at "greed" and "unrealistically huge profit margins".

This kind of mindless villainizing of the many good people who take risks to create livable real estate in our cities just gets old.

My god what a naive position.

Well considering the site had two proposals each having a 2000ft building on it... then a 850ft plus and 750ft plus dual tower in comparison is "safe"...despite them being very nice looking buildings architecturally regardless. Just my opinion though

i'm sorry, but i didn't see any "mindless villainizing" in pianowizard's post.

he merely expressed his opinion that the developers over-reached on this project, trying to charge ultra-luxury condo prices in a non-ultra-luxury location.

if they had aimed lower, they might've sold more units, and thus gotten the project funded.

but here we are........

* MODERATOR EDIT *

NEMA II discussion moved to the chicago highrise thread: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=218289

Agreed. Very well could have been a programmatic/target market miscalculation which was indeed mainly or partially greed-driven. It's at least a legitimate possibility. Not exceedingly difficult to think of various product compositions of a similar FAR project at this site which may have produced a lower return on paper but were more likely to actually be.....built (at a profit).


At any rate, it was always a weird - and dumb - decision to drop the rental section. If this tower had a composition (in percentage terms) like One Bennett Park rental/condo (at a submarket-appropriate price point), this very well may have been topped-off - or open - by now. Or frankly possibly all-rental as well, for that matter.


So, who here actually buys the developer's media claim that they had halted construction due to physical distancing concerns at this particular job? Anybody?

You, me, Pianowizard, and "I always knew it" Mr. SamintheLoop don't know how excessively greedy or how "unrealistically high" the profit margins of this project were, and we probably never will.

Again, I don't disagree that they shot for too high a price and failed--the market didn't support it--this venture was a costly failure for the development team.

But questioning the developer's motives, insinuating that they had more than acceptable levels of greed, or shooting for "higher than typical" profit margins, as Pianowizard did, was not necessary. Unless somebody can pull out a calculator and run the numbers, and determine that once construction costs, debt service, permits fees, marketing fees, etc etc are accounted for, the developer was aiming for a profit margin far in excess of his peers. If that can be demonstrated, then I will be the first to agree that "excess greed" was the case.