Okay here's a cool and interesting one. Hopefully some people get excited about this. Sky River, which is a local Chinese developer behind some developments and upcoming ones, wants to renovate the 110 year old historic building on Cermak & Grove, which is on the river.
They want to make it into a 200 room hotel with retail and office uses. Unfortunately, they want to turn the vacant lot across the street (also on the river) to a 115 spot parking lot for the hotel. The cool part at least is that they propose to make a landscaped riverwalk for the entire 280,000 sq ft building and parking lot along the river. I did a little more digging, and they're calling it Hoyt Square and they have a website for this. Apparently the company behind the Good Fortune supermarket chain in NYC and the area bought shares in Sky River recently. The plans for this look really big.
https://www.465wcermak.com
Included:
* 200 room hotel
* 43,000 square foot Good Fortune supermarket (Chinese/Asian)
* A 99 Favor Taste hot pot restaurant --> they are in NYC and the hot pot is good. Certainly would become one of the better hot pots in Chicago if not the best.
* 2 mores restaurants including a Hot Space (grilled fish) which is in Flushing and Brooklyn, as well as an 800 seat Cantonese restaurant (i.e. get your dim sum here)
* A coffee shop with pastries
* "Home Smart Mall" - looks like show rooms for your home like Merchandise Mart does. 90,000 square feet.
* 45,000 square foot spa with swimming pool, bath house, etc.
* Food court
This is really interesting to me not only because they want to renovate a 110 year old historic building on the river and put a riverwalk in it with a hotel, but for what they want to do with it. This basically has Flushing (Queens) written all over it - some of these restaurants are in Flushing (most legit Chinese area in NYC in my opinion), but also just the scale of this thing. There's a few big things like this in Flushing - and also one of my favorite parts in all of NYC. Also it's interesting because another restaurant from Flushing recently opened a Chicago outpost in Chinatown. Specifically that is called Friend BBQ - their restaurant in Flushing (which we are fans of) is called Friendship BBQ.
Sign of things to come for Chicago Chinatown area..? I wonder if more investors or restaurants from Flushing might be coming to Chicago if this thing gets off the ground.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/45....6391709?hl=en