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Originally Posted by emathias
That's just pathetic.
Personally, what I'd like that to be is a boutique office building of the scale of some of the ones going up in the West Loop, targeted toward tech firms, increasing the residential/commercial mix in the area. I guess the one good thing about not building anything of much value there is that in the next big boom, a developer could buy it and turn it into something bigger fairly easily.
If this is going to be a 1-story tax-payer type project, it'd be nice to have a grocery store there - perhaps a Bockwinkles. I think the area could support one now. If they built a re-inforced roof, they could even put parking on top.
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It's kind of a strange building, it's designed to be a facsimile of an average high-rise floor, so they did cast-in-place concrete columns, floor and ceiling slabs. Nobody would ever do that for a typical one-story taxpayer building.
The structure may look beefy, and it's true cast-in-place concrete, but I'm guessing it was designed to be inexpensive in every way. Probably a shallow foundation with a very thin ceiling slab. I doubt it can support much weight at all. Also, if it's post-tensioned then it will be difficult for retail tenants to cut openings for mechanicals, cooking equipment, etc.
Probably Smithfield (or whomever controls the building now) is looking for really short-term leases or even popups... sales on 808 have shut down, but they'll probably wait until the next economic cycle (or an uptick in the condo market) to relaunch with a smaller proposal. Could be a good opportunity for an independent business to get a great white box location, at least for a few years. Somebody like Dark Matter Coffee could come in and set up, with relatively little construction needed.