CHICAGO | Highrise Projects & Construction

[the urban politician]

^ It's essentially concentrated housing for the poor

At least those are the complaints that I've heard..

[spyguy]

So I think the Roosevelt dorm tower and Ronald McDonald House fall under site prep/demo, right?

Herman Crown Center coming down. I assume the Pago Pago sign won't be around much longer.


211 E Grand - another old Streeterville building bites the dust



10 E Delaware


Hotel Palomar

[harryc]

Originally Posted by spyguy

211 E Grand - another old Streeterville building bites the dust

Thank you for the heads up Spy Guy - Hopefully they are saving the facade for re-use. - I will miss the history in context - not only the nice facade but the walls with all the marks of change and use on them.



A few more shots from last summer in this mislabeled (?) album

[harryc]

Jan 15 - from the El stop.

[harryc]

From above (Jan 13)


2009 Series - 2010 Series

Radical new design.


Jan 5
NW corner


From the West


Nearby amenities


Jan 13

[harryc]

In the best possible light.

Dec 29


Dec 29

Mounting brackets for turbines.

Dec 31



Dec 31

Still waiting - Jan 13


Still waiting - Jan 5

[a chicago bearcat]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

[i]Controversial tower gets Oak Park plan commission OK
January 15, 2010 2:29 AM

full article: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/...-recommmend-approval-of-glass-tower.html

here's a rendering for reference:

There is no way they could possibly design that base to look at transparent and airy as they are rendering it. Which means I do not have a good feeling about this project.

[a chicago bearcat]

Originally Posted by spyguy

So I think the Roosevelt dorm tower and Ronald McDonald House fall under site prep/demo, right?

Herman Crown Center coming down. I assume the Pago Pago sign won't be around much longer.

They aren't tearing down that structure,

unless they are pulling off a facadectomy on only that sliver

btw this image really highlights how the floor height changes after about the 15th floor

image can be found at
http://chicagoismynewblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/roosevelt.jpg

[aspiringArchitect]

The Roosevelt Tower is going to be awesome. Tall and slender, like the Legacy, which is my favorite new building in Chicago as of now. Although I do wonder why they didn't chose to build it on the north side of the Herman Center where there is a parking lot right now. Granted the building it is replacing is pretty ugly, but I'd still rather see a usesless parking lot go before a pretty good sized building that could probably be put to some new use. Still, this is a great project. I'm looking forward to see it rise!

The Greenway Garage on the other hand, is a mess. If they had only thrown some different colored panels into the mix, it could have looked so much better. See this green garage in Santa Monica.

Or, even something like this would look good. I remember walking past this in Grand Rapids a couple years ago and being pretty impressed. From street level I thought it was an actual historic office building. (I think they had added windows since this picture was taken.)



Anyway, that's my spiel. I rarely comment on here but I just wanted to add my two cents on these two things.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by harryc

Dec 31

i love this shot. the architecture may be questionable (or not), but i love this image because it so clearly demonstrates the monumental change that dearborn & kinzie has undergone over the last few years. when i first moved to the neighborhood 3 years ago, none of the above buildings existed and the area was nothing but a huge swath of city-killing surface lots. now it at least looks like a city again.

[FlashingLights]

Originally Posted by aspiringArchitect

The Roosevelt Tower is going to be awesome. Tall and slender, like the Legacy, which is my favorite new building in Chicago as of now. Although I do wonder why they didn't chose to build it on the north side of the Herman Center where there is a parking lot right now. Granted the building it is replacing is pretty ugly, but I'd still rather see a usesless parking lot go before a pretty good sized building that could probably be put to some new use. Still, this is a great project. I'm looking forward to see it rise!

The Greenway Garage on the other hand, is a mess. If they had only thrown some different colored panels into the mix, it could have looked so much better. See this green garage in Santa Monica.

Or, even something like this would look good. I remember walking past this in Grand Rapids a couple years ago and being pretty impressed. From street level I thought it was an actual historic office building. (I think they had added windows since this picture was taken.)

Anyway, that's my spiel. I rarely comment on here but I just wanted to add my two cents on these two things.

Good post I agree with you on Legacy and Roosevelt's Dorm Tower. They will be some of best looking new stock overall. The tall thinner buildings work well behind the old Michigan Avenue street wall. I think the location was fine student's I know at Roosevelt said the old Herman Crown Center building was horrendous and not even worthy of saving.

I tried really hard to like the green garage, but I can't really seem to like it no matter how hard I try. I'm never one to settle for "well it's better then a surface lot, or a parking garage", and in this case it is a parking garage. I think the "green" aspect kind of seems like a gimmick overall so that there would be less complaints about it being built, and it seemed to work.

[Mr Downtown]

Roosevelt doesn't own that parking lot at the corner of Van Buren. Herman Crown Center isn't sprinklered (or air-conditioned, I think), so they'd face big costs to continue using it.

Only the façade of the Fine Arts Annex will be saved. The interior had been drastically altered at least twice.

[FlashingLights]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Roosevelt doesn't own that parking lot at the corner of Van Buren. Herman Crown Center isn't sprinklered (or air-conditioned, I think), so they'd face big costs to continue using it.

Only the façade of the Fine Arts Annex will be saved. The interior had been drastically altered at least twice.

Yes, it was going to cost them more money to renovate and install a sprinkler system up to code than to just restart. In addition the interior was terrible by almost all accounts. The building was really not architecturally significant anyways.

I was curious if anyone knew the original date of completion on the Herman Crown Center that is now destroyed, Emporis doesn't have the information.

[Mr Downtown]

Herman Crown Center
425 S. Wabash
17 stories, 364 beds
1971, Mittelbusher & Tourtelot

[ardecila]

Yea, I'm pretty sure that the Fine Arts annex will be a facadectomy. It makes sense, I guess - there's really no good way to integrate such a narrow building into the dorm tower.

If we're lucky, Roosevelt may build the party wall out of Chicago common, but I'm not holding my breath... they'll probably go for infill panels in the concrete frame.

I like Greenway Garage - the channel glass looks good and the concrete provides a nice counterpoint. It's the god-awful puke-green glass panels that I can't stand. Why don't they just use a bluish glass to match the channels?

[Busy Bee]

^Puke green? No my friend, they're diarrhea brown.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

^Puke green? No my friend, they're diarrhea brown.

What color is your diarrhea?

[BorisMolotov]

That question is something best reserved for a doctor-patient conversation, not a Chicago building forum.

[i_am_hydrogen]

Originally Posted by aspiringArchitect

The Roosevelt Tower is going to be awesome. Tall and slender, like the Legacy, which is my favorite new building in Chicago as of now. Although I do wonder why they didn't chose to build it on the north side of the Herman Center where there is a parking lot right now. Granted the building it is replacing is pretty ugly, but I'd still rather see a usesless parking lot go before a pretty good sized building that could probably be put to some new use. Still, this is a great project. I'm looking forward to see it rise!

There is another dormitory proposed for that parking lot. This project, however, faces opposition from Ald. Fioretti.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by i_am_hydrogen

This project, however, faces opposition from Ald. Fioretti.

Students might have the gall to be on the sidewalk talking to each other at the sinfully late hour of 11pm, and that's just not within the character of the quiet, residential 2nd Ward. What do you think this is, some kind of downtown of some kind of city? Such and such little old lady moved to this neighborhood in nineteen dickety four before it was cool and we made this neighborhood what it is, and you want to come in here and....

Well, either that standard nonsense of old people who missed the fact that it's no longer 1972, or the developer hasn't yet ponied up an adequately sized campaign donation just yet.