CHICAGO | Highrise Projects & Construction, v7

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Or just all of Pilsen, Little Village, and Garfield Park into an extension of the NW side...

You seem to forget that all three of the CTA Lines that transect from the West start in the suburbs (with Park N Rides to boot) and that this is no further from Union/Ogalvie than Michigan Ave is... If Class A office can subsist in Streeterville and Illinois Center, than it will have no problem doing so in an area that is better connected to transit, not to mention has far superior freeway access...

They have park and rides, but with no plans to expand the parking there is not much room for growth. I'm pretty sure those lots fill up every day and surrounding side streets are heavily policed to prevent commuter parking. At least Oak Park, Forest Park and Cicero are very walkable and have decent connecting bus service. On a related note, the irony of Metra is that ridership is almost exactly the same as what it was in 1980, except where parking lots have been expanded or new stations added. You can't add more people to the trains if they can't access the stations, even though suburban populations have grown significantly.

In my Millennial-focused West Loop office, we have several people who commute in from Oak Park. Usually when one partner works in the suburbs and the other partner works downtown. Hence the explosion of new apartments in downtown Oak Park. Typically they walk to Metra due to the perceived sketchiness of the Green Line, but I'm sure Oak Park has plenty of more adventurous Millennials hopping on CTA as well.

On the other hand, just saw that the West quadrant of Chicago including everything from West Loop to Wicker to Logan to Austin to Little Village is now seeing the highest bump in tax rates... this will for sure accelerate any gentrification in West Side hoods as long-time homeowners get pushed out. In the short term it may accelerate abandonment, though... many of those areas are just too disinvested for more prosperous residents to feel comfortable moving in.

[SamInTheLoop]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Or just all of Pilsen, Little Village, and Garfield Park into an extension of the NW side...

You seem to forget that all three of the CTA Lines that transect from the West start in the suburbs (with Park N Rides to boot) and that this is no further from Union/Ogalvie than Michigan Ave is... If Class A office can subsist in Streeterville and Illinois Center, than it will have no problem doing so in an area that is better connected to transit, not to mention has far superior freeway access...

It's not only the commuter lines though - it's a combination of that and proximity to all of the CTA lines (without switching lines), which the East Loop does enjoy. And I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of the East Loop - there's a reason why it has lost favor in terms of new office growth to Wacker and proximate locations over the last 20 years - those locations are much more conveniently located to both the commuter stations and all of the CTA lines - again without switching lines. A city that planned intelligently would really focus large scale new office development within the Loop and near-west Loop (east of expressway), and discourage a concentration of large office buildings in an area that is presently much less capable of efficiently handling the resulting commutes. In an era in which we are simply not going to be building massive new transit infrastructure (we're not, fantasy projects we all dream about aside), we really need to wise up and start planning as a city and promoting economic development in a way that really leverages the strong existing infrastructure that we have.

Perhaps Lightfoot will get this......?

[the urban politician]

^ Hey, if I can build a highrise and somebody wants to lease it, and banks want to finance it, then that's what I'll be doing.

And that's what's happening in the West Loop. It may not have the best of the best as far as transportation access, but it's still pretty darn good.

Companies, business, retail, hotels, etc are moving there in droves. So one can be like that image of Grampa Simpson yelling at a cloud, or we can accept that there is a real market desire, however irrational, to be in this part of town.

Perhaps some of it has to do with the fact that workers don't want to be in the midst of huge, sterile skyscraper canyons. Perhaps workers want to be in an area with a bit more character, less intense, yet still urban and edgy--like the west loop. There are more factors at play here than just transportation access.

[SamInTheLoop]

^ So my point is that this is where the city steps up and does it's job and actually institutes a planning function that meets some minimum standard. The job of city planning is not to accommodate whatever the real estate market wants to do, and step aside. It's to plan, for....among other things...smart growth....to guide future growth, and economic development....in an efficient way, that takes a comprehensive view toward economic, social, environmental benefits for the city - and dare I say region. I know, this is revolutionary stuff!

[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ How is an area like Streeterville which is, at best, half a mile from the Red Line more "proximate to all of the CTA lines"? You realize that it's like a 20 minute walk from the nearest Loop station to many parts of Illinois Center and Streeterville? These areas have ZERO train lines running through them which is literally the opposite of "proximity to all of the CTA lines". Meanwhile the West Loop has the Pink Line, the Green Line, and the Blue Line Oak Park branch running directly through it and has the O'Hare branch skirting the Northern Edge of the area. The West Loop blows anything East of Michigan Ave out of the water in terms of connections to the CTA. I would much rather ride the Pink Line to the Loop and have to transfer to another line than walk 20 minutes in the cold or rain to a Red Line train that may or may not actually directly where I'm headed.

You act as if a two stop transfer from one subway line to another is some sort of exotic trip that the riders of any decent metro system would find appalling. Oh wait, no, that's literally a joke in any other city on the planet, that adds basically zero hardship to a trip and most other systems globally are riddled with transfers and connections. I would venture to guess that the majority of trips taken on the MTA in NYC involve at least one transfer...

This isn't rocket science dude, what you are saying is basically that Hudson Yards will be a failure because the subway spur they built to it will require that most commuters transfer to the 7 from whatever line they are coming in on...

It's literally the same distance from Grand Central to Hudson Yards as it is from Morgan to Union Station. This is not some crazy outlier of urbanity dude, this is a totally normal development pattern for literally anywhere else on the planet. Office districts go up within 1 mile of major transit hubs. That's how it works, and guess what? The West Loop fits that mold perfectly.

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

The job of city planning is not to accommodate whatever the real estate market wants to do, and step aside. It's to plan, for....among other things...smart growth....to guide future growth, and economic development....

Which is exactly what the city did. It invested $38 million dollars in Morgan Station. And lo and behold, smart growth around that station followed as intended. They did leverage existing infrastructure, the underutilized Green Line.
As AlpacaObsessor's map shows, virtually all West Loop development is within easy walking distance of Morgan. (It's also as we have pointed out, within a moderate walk from Ogilvie, equivalent to getting to Michigan Ave).
The West Loop is NOT Schaumburg.

I also agree with LVDW, "Without switching lines" is a completely unrealistic standard for a major metro system. It is not a hardship to take the Brown to Washington/Wells and take the Pink back out to Morgan. That's a 35-40 minute commute from Addison-Brown to Morgan, almost all of it productive time on a train. The area of Chicago within 30-40 minutes and one transfer to Morgan is huge.

To hold that all new office space must be east of the Kennedy will result in either the demo of all historic / inefficient buildings that people love, or development will be so restricted that companies are priced out of Chicago. East of the Kennedy is already so constrained that nothing less than 600-800 feet will be built there. Anyone who wants a campus like Google or McDonalds is out of luck.

[jc5680]

I genuinely can't keep track of what's been posted - but in addition to the Crains article Spyguy shared yesterday, they also had another article with rendering for two more new buildings at ~1025 Fulton.

• 200-room,12-story Pendry hotel
• adjacent six-story, 46,000-square-foot office building at the corner of Fulton Market and Carpenter Street that would be owned and anchored by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

^ So my point is that this is where the city steps up and does it's job and actually institutes a planning function that meets some minimum standard. The job of city planning is not to accommodate whatever the real estate market wants to do, and step aside. It's to plan, for....among other things...smart growth....to guide future growth, and economic development....in an efficient way, that takes a comprehensive view toward economic, social, environmental benefits for the city - and dare I say region. I know, this is revolutionary stuff!

Source

[SamInTheLoop]

^ Because that's a particularly effective argument against having a functional city planning department engaged in at minimum the lowest common denominator of widely accepted smart planning principles.

[SamInTheLoop]

^ Latest Fulton Proposal: a boutique office project makes a lot of sense. The larger building would of course make more sense as residential than hotel.....but of course, residential is zoned-out of Fulton, because.......

[djc2]

There is some activity on site. A mobile crane and some miscellaneous items. They were unloading some steel beams this morning. Only had a glimpse from the train, so I am not sure what they are doing.

[The Lurker]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

^ Latest Fulton Proposal: a boutique office project makes a lot of sense. The larger building would of course make more sense as residential than hotel.....but of course, residential is zoned-out of Fulton, because.......

I say wait til the area is more built out before easing restrictions on residential. I personally don't want to see this momentum derailed by NIMBYism yet.

[KWillChicago]

Originally Posted by djc2

There is some activity on site. A mobile crane and some miscellaneous items. They were unloading some steel beams this morning. Only had a glimpse from the train, so I am not sure what they are doing.

Hell yeah. So many lots in that area that need to bite the dust.

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

The larger building would of course make more sense as residential than hotel.....but of course, residential is zoned-out of Fulton, because.......

Because it makes much more sense for a neighborhood like South Loop to be residential, where the Green Line gets folks to both the Loop and West Loop. Without switching lines. Cermack to Morgan on the Green is 19 minutes. Not bad.

It’s not like McDonalds didn’t have plenty of south loop locations to choose from if that’s where they wanted to be.
Zoning has to work with market trends. Not oppose them.

[wchicity]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

^ Latest Fulton Proposal: a boutique office project makes a lot of sense. The larger building would of course make more sense as residential than hotel.....but of course, residential is zoned-out of Fulton, because.......

Pendry is a very trendy hotel brand, so I'd imagine they're following the likes of Hoxton, Soho House, Nobu, etc. I think it'll be a good catalyst for bringing more people west on Fulton Market.

[aaron38]

I feel I've been too harsh. The West Loop is really big and there's plenty of room for residential. The SW portion centered at Madison and Loomis already has parks and schools, while almost all of the projects in this circle are residential.

People can choose to be near the Green or Blue Line or the Ashland bus. Is there a bus line that runs Ashland/Ogden/Lake? If not there should be. And there are a lot of jobs in the immediate area where you just walk.

Let Morgan be the center of a commercial node and let a residential neighborhood not be the center of attention.

[harryc]

June 7

Chicago | Renelle on the river by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

June 13

Chicago | Renelle on the river by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

June 14

Chicago | Renelle on the river by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

June 21

Chicago | Renelle on the river by Harry Carmichael, on Flickr

[k1052]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

^ Latest Fulton Proposal: a boutique office project makes a lot of sense. The larger building would of course make more sense as residential than hotel.....but of course, residential is zoned-out of Fulton, because.......

Various west loop factions wanted residential prohibited north of Lake St and got it. Now they spend their time fighting proposals that are naturally occurring south of it.

Fulton is a real and desirable office market. It's time to accept this as a fact. Its existence doesn't seem to be hurting the lease up of other west loop properties or even the millions of square feet at OPO.

[PittsburghPA]

[BonoboZill4]

Various projects across the city:









Cabrini (very) Green ready and waiting...







Think of the children this shadow has tortured:











I believe three proposals will/might be located within the bottom lefthand corner of this photo"













Enjoy