Giant Punch Stamp on the River? First Renderings for 150 North Riverside office tower and park - Revealed and Considered

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150 North Riverside and date stamp - separated at birth?

Is a new real estate bubble rising around the Chicago River?  Long dormant land in and around Wolf Point is already under construction with two major skyscrapers, and this morning, in an email to his constituents, 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly unveiled the first renderings I've seen of the proposed office tower for 150 North Riverside, to be built on air rights over tracks leading into Union Station . . .

. . . just east of Graham Anderson, Probst and White's 1922 Butler Brothers warehouse II.

I actually worked for 6 years on its top floor before it was converted by Hartshorne Plunkard into the Randolph Place Lofts.  Unlike its twin building to the south, which was made into - and remains - offices - it's now housing, and the residential nature of Randolph Place may be a key reason while 150 North Riverside is placed in the middle of the site.  The Trib's Blair Kamin is tweeting Goettsch Partners is responsible for the design.

Unusual proposed office tower for Chicago riverfront, by Goettsch Partners, flares out from base to upper floors. pic.twitter.com/DV9Uv43Eih
— Blair Kamin (@BlairKamin) July 17, 2013

The 1.2 million square foot building is being pushed by long-time John Buck veteran John O'Donnell, now of the Chicago operations of Colliers International.  An April article by Ryan Ori in Crain's Chicago Business reported O'Donnell had given up a request for $20 million in TIF funding to get approval for the project moving forward.  River Point, currently under construction along the river across the street, got $29.5 million in TIF money to cover over the Metra tracks and create a riverfront park.  Instead, O'Donnell wants the city to give him a slice of land worth $4-5 million the city controls to make his site complete.  The rest of it was purchased for $12.5 million in 2011.

According to Crain's, Reilly had been fighting an earlier proposal because the park component wasn't at ground level.  In the rendering released in his email, the park remains entirely at the elevated street level, with no riverbank component

Boeing riverwalk

Across Randolph Street to the south, at the Boeing World Headquarters (originally designed by Perkins+Will in 1990 for Morton Salt), the riverside esplanade is split into two, relatively narrow parts, one above-grade, at the level of Randolph and Lake streets, with another narrow strip descending all the way down to the river. In the 150 Riverside rendering, the plaza space is all at street level, with a larger portion south of Lake tucked beneath the angled cantilevers of the building.

park at River Point

Across the street to the north, on the other side of Lake Street, renderings of the park building built along the river as part of the River Point shows, as at Boeing, a park split between ground and street level.  The ground level links to a riverside esplanade at the River Bend residential tower to the north. The difference is the River Point site is actually set back to the west, parallel to where the Butler Brothers building is sited to the south.  The park itself is to be a built over what looks to be pretty much the whole expanse of the Metra tracks, making the acre-and-a-half park much larger than what's possible at 150 North Riverside.  (Don't be fooled by the rendering, which is drawn from an exaggerated wide-angle perspective that makes the park look only slightly smaller than Yellowstone.)

150 North Riverside

I get what Ald. Reilly is looking for, a continuous riverwalk from River Point to the elevated plaza of the old Daily News Building.  It would require the addition of under-the-bridge linking components, but it would offer up something similar to continuous Riverwalk now under development for the south bank of the river from Lake to Wabash.   The problem, of course, is that it could only go to the old Daily News Building (now Riverside Plaza), at Madison, where the riverwalk south to Jackson is all elevated at street level.  (And let's hope 150 North doesn't give Sam Zell ideas about resurrecting his old plan to build over the Daily News Plaza.  Surprise, surprise, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks has never gotten around to landmarking this essential Chicago building.)

Daily News Building (Riverside Plaza) meets the river

So for continuity, you want a large part of the park at 150 North Riverside to be at an elevated level so it will link it to the existing river walkways north and south.  If you want to split off a walkway along the river, it would have to be somewhat narrow, and, as at Boeing, it's hard to find a graceful way to get people to the lower level without a vertiginous shotgun stairway.  In addition, the 150 North Riverside rendering also shows the space along the river beneath the plaza to be inhabited with some function not clearly apparent.

As for the building itself, if it weren't for the angled cantilever at the bottom, it really doesn't have much to distinguish itself visually at all and, at first glance, I'm not even sure the cantilever works.  There seems to be a lot of tall, tall concrete at the base.  Dear readers, what's your take?

In any event, more should learned from the public hearing.  Welcome to the arena, Mr. O'Donnell.

42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly is sponsoring a public meeting for his constituents on 150 North Riverside, 6:00 p.m., July 31st in Walnut Ballroom of the Hotel Allegro, 171 West Randolph.

Read More:

Hour of the Wolf:  The Transformation of the Pivot Point of Chicago

The Daily News Building Plaza: Endgame for one of Chicago's Great Public Spaces?

Hour of the Wolf: The Transformation of the Pivot Point of Chicago

There is really nothing like this site in the world, certainly not in Chicago.  It's pivotal. It's central   It's waiting for its moment in history - architect Fred W. Clarke

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 As the light of dawn seeped through the shutters of his small, lonely cabin, John Kinzie, Chicago's first permanent settler, arose one morning with a sense of foreboding.  In the middle of night, he had been awakened, not by a sound, but by the lack of it.  The howling of the wolves gathered around the ruins of Old Fort Dearborn, to which he had become so accustomed that they would lull him to sleep, stopped, suddenly, like an extinguished candle. As he slowly pulled back the heavy timber door, his eyes were momentarily blinded by the light of the sun flooding in like a great wave.  As John Kinzie looked down the river, he staggered back as if punched in the face, for this is what he saw . . .

These are the three towers approved by the Chicago Plan Commission last Thursday for Wolf Point, the parking lot that's at the center of Chicago's identify.  The small peninsula that makes up the current geography of Wolf Point is what you see represented between the two diagonal stems of the “Y” that, enclosed in a circle, forms the “Municipal Device” that is the official symbol of Chicago.  It represents the North and South branches of the Chicago River coming together to form the final leg that flows to Lake Michigan.

No structure, no tree, no blade of grass remains from John Kinzie's Wolf Point, but, until now, Wolf Point was the place where flush-with-the-river skyscrapers give way to an enduring, if crumbling, natural embankment . . .

It is the place where Chicago's dense downtown ends.   Remnants of the city's industrial past still define the edge, punctuated by the 225-foot-high smokestack of the 1911 Chicago and Northwestern Railway Power Station.

It's a district of loft buildings, viaducts, abject shacks and Metra trains entering Union Station at grade level, tripping an anachronistic symphony of the bells of crossing gates, behind which cars stand waiting as if still in 19th century Chicago, the modern city skyline safely off to the side.

That skyline is filled with towers along the river. Wolf Point, in contrast, is the prime site that is actually in the river, jutting south in a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides.  As a surface parking lot, it's a minor, almost bucolic visual presence as you gaze down the East leg of the Chicago River.

River Point

 Swap out the parking for a 950-foot-high tower, and throw in another new 700-foot-high story tower, River Point at 444 West Lake, on the opposing bank of the river, covering up the now open railroad tracks, and you've pretty much completely redefined the profile of the Chicago River.  Does the new design live up to the “historic moment” Fred W. Clarke claims?

A Brief History of Wolf Point [or SKIP to the story today]

In the earliest days of the Chicago, the pivot of Wolf Point encompassed both the small peninsula which today bears that name, but the entire adjacent riverfront.  The city's earliest permanent settlers scattered their buildings across both banks.  There were no bridges.  The first ferry service didn't begin until 1829.  Crossings were via canoe.

The Miller Tavern was the first building on the Wolf Point peninsula.  The tannery that was added in 1831 was said to be Chicago's first factory.  As the city grew, river traffic boomed, and it was often as crowded with ships as rush-hour Kennedy is today with cars.

Wolf Point 1893 - Davidson and Sons building (9)

After the great fire of 1871, 10-story-high grain elevators rose on the river banks right across from Wolf Point, with a capacity of over a million bushels of grain.  To the north of the site, a battery of railroad tracks fed into the Wells Street Station, at Kinzie, which served 200 trains and 32,000 passengers a day.  On Wolf Point proper, the largest construction was a single-story warehouse and an 1872, five story building for Davidson and Sons Wholesale Marble and Granite.  In the 1890's, already battered by an economic recession, the company doubled up with "a fatal investment" that bet big on becoming a major player in the booming bicycle manufacturing industry.  Within two years the boom went bust, and in 1897 the Davidson and Sons imploded into "one of the worst failures the marble trade has ever experienced", with debts of $611,718.48.  According to planner and historian Lawrence Okrent, Wolf Point's most enduring function was as “a storage yard for bulk construction materials.”

In 1911, the passenger traffic of the Wells Street Station was moved to the new Chicago and Northwestern depot at Madison and Canal.  By 1930, the Marshall Field estate had demolished Wells Street Station to make way for the construction of the massive Merchandise Mart, the largest building in the world, spelling doom for another irreplaceable lost Chicago landmark, Henry Hobson Richardson's 1885 Marshall Field Wholesale Store.  Throughout the decade, Marshall Field's wholesale business declined, and in 1945 the 4-million-square-foot building, on the site of an Indian trading post, was sold to another kind of trader, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had made his initial fortune trading in alcohol, as one of the Prohibition era's most enterprising bootleggers.

The Mart thrived under the Kennedy's, and in 1977 they jumped Orleans street to Wolf Point to erect an annex, the 2-million-square-foot Apparel Center, 24 stories of bunkered banality, topped by a Holiday Inn.  The balance of the peninsula became a surface parking lot.

The sheer awfulness of the  Apparel Center was not accidental.  At a public meeting on the Wolf Point proposal this past May, Lawrence Okrent, who was working at Skidmore Owings and Merrill at the time,  remembered that “everybody knew and everybody understood that the Apparel Mart was meant to be a utilitarian background building .  It was never going to be exceedingly prominent and it was always imagined to accede to something much more consequential at Wolf Point.”

But for the better part of half a century, the Apparel Center, with its floor after floor of blank concrete walls, remained the only consequential thing at Wolf Point.  Even as, on the river's west bank, Harry Weese punched windows into blank facades to create the Fulton House condominiums out of a 1898 cold storage warehouse best known for being painted over as a 170-foot-high ad for Old Forester bourbon, the Apparel Center continued to impose a warehouse aesthetic that had its own banal majesty.

Over time, the Apparel Center began to transition from garment trade showrooms to general office space, marked by late 1980's improvements that included Helmut Jahn's second-story pedestrian bridge to the Mart and street level upgrades from Bayer Blender Belle. In the 1990's, a grid of windows was punched into the blank concrete walls of the lower floors.  In 2004, the Chicago Sun-Times moved in, placings its nameplate on the facade.  Sometime later this year, the last apparel-related tenant will have been eased out of the building.  Fully unclothed, the building's name is now its address, 350 North Orleans.

The Rumble at Wolf Point

In 1998 Kennedy Enterprises cashed out their stake in the Merchandise Mart and 350 North Orleans for over half a billion dollars, but held on to those underused 3.85 acres - parcel “B” -  on Wolf Point, playing a waiting game.  In 2006, the family entered into a joint venture with Hines Interests, a developer with a long history in Chicago, mostly recently with the completion of the 60-story 300 North LaSalle in 2009, three blocks down the river.

After interviewing “six of the most world class architectural firms that exist”, Hines brought in Pelli Clarke Pelli to oversee the final, big payoff.  bKL Architecture, Wolff Landscape Architecture, and Magellan Development round out the development team.

The results were unveiled at a public meeting at 350 North Orleans last May:  a billion dollar project, to be built in three phases, with three towers ranging from 525 to 950 feet in height, nearly 4 million total square-feet of space, 1,285 parking spaces and 100,000 square feet of park, riverwalk and plaza.
And perhaps best of all, it's all supposed to be done without public subsidies or TIF money.

The meeting, called by  Alderman Brendan Reilly - whose 42nd ward includes Wolf Point - allowed developer, architects, and zoning and traffic consultants to present the development proposal to Reilly's constituents, many of whom, rallying around a new organization, Friends of Wolf Point,  were anything but happy campers.

Reilly held a second meeting in the fall to announce some revisions designed to answer at least some of the public concerns.  Things seemed to be going along swimmingly, but shortly thereafter Reilly  
was blindsided in November when revised documents filed by the developer suddenly asked approval for up to 1,800 hotel rooms on the site. The word "hotel" had never been uttered in the initial public meeting in May.  Reilly yanked Wolf Point from the Plan Commission's December agenda, and scheduled a third public meeting, at which veteran fixer and zoning lawyer Jack George tried to re-assure attendees that no deception was intended, and everything was going to be fine.

That didn't assuage Friends, which continues to oppose the project on the basis of unsupportable density, traffic congestion, and violation of zoning ordinance's 30-foot setback requirement for new construction along the river.  (The architects are attempting to get around this by supporting a building essentially flush to river edge on ultra-tall pilotis that create open space at the level of the riverwalk.)  FoWP also wants written assurances that Wolf Point won't somehow become the site for a new Chicago casino.

Cutting the maximum number of hotels down to 450 appears was enough, however, for Reilly,  announced his support for the revised plan, and shepherded it to unanimous approval by the Chicago Plan Commission last Thursday, January 24th.

Fair enough. Things change.  The city has had over a century to buy this property for a public park, which in many ways would have been a more natural fit - pun intended - for this parcel.  It never did, however, and now it is not unreasonable that the Kennedy's want to cash in on their investment.  It is also not unreasonable, however, given the seminal location that is Wolf Point, to hold the development to the highest standard, even if that standard exceeds the one currently set by the developer and their architects.

The Wolf Point Plan: Is it Good Enough?

There is much to like about the proposal from a civic standpoint.  The master plan incorporates “Six Master Plan Principles,” that refer to context, framing, textured facades with rich materials, and maximizing the distances between buildings while minimizing the footprints, with an emphasis on transparency and openness at a ground level of landscaped public space

Foremost,  the master plan takes the Point from parking lot to park.  The footprint of the three towers could have taken up to 60% of the surface of the site under the Planned Development ordinance.  In actual design, they take up 25%  Parking remains, but the cars are pushed underground and out of sight.  “You'll never know - cross my heart and hope to die - that there's anything concrete or structure or parking below,” said noted landscape architect Ted Wolff at the May public meeting.

 “We are proposing to plant native and adaptive species. They will be hardy in this climate.  They will be suitable for this location. They'll be repairing species that we expect to see along the river like maple trees and swamp white oaks and elms and things like that.”

By the time all three towers are completed, there will be nearly 900 linear feet of riverwalk at Wolf Point.  70% of the site will be parkland, 40% of the site planted.  The towers will be at least 75 feet away from each other, but at the public, lobby level that grows to 100 feet.  Already one major flaw of the May plan has been revised, with the "alpha point" of the riverwalk expanded in width and moved out from under the shadow of the south tower, free from the tall pilotis that are being used to lift up the buildings and tuck public space beneath. 

Although its defined as "phase two", that south tower may be a while in coming. Initially, only the west, residential tower is shovel ready, and only the westernmost portion of the park and riverwalk will be completed as part of the initial construction, with the balance of Wolf Point remaining a parking lot pending implementation of the future phases. “In the interim,” says Wolff, ”all the landscaping on that riverbank will stay.  All the existing landscaping in the surface parking lot will stay, as well.”

So far, the most energetic push-back over the plan for Wolf Point has come Friends of Wolf Point.  They're articulate and capable and they've hired a good lawyer.  I don't see much point in doubling their efforts.

What there has not been much of is discussion of the proposal for Wolf Point from a civic design perspective.  For one of the most visible and defining sites in Chicago, the silence is eerie and unsettling.  Is the design that good, or have we merely grown that docile?

Right now, the developers simply want to get the West Tower going, and, concerns of the FoWP aside, I can think of no reason why they anyone should stop them.  Hugging the shore, the West Tower does, it's true,  extend the canyon wall of the Apparel Center, but it's also at the northernmost point of the site, leaving the area to the south open for the substantial new segment of park that comes with the tower's construction.  The way the landscaped walkway beneath and beside it meets the river is much more gracious than the esplanade of River Bend on the opposite bank, and the overall architecture a distinct improvement over the white cliff  of mediocrity that's the nearby Left Bank at K Station.

At the May meeting, Tom Kerwin of bKL talked about “the effort to introduce balconies so that they're carved into the building and not tacked on. . . The curtain wall has accents of horizontal tubes which will further conceal and integrate with the balconies so that those tubes will form the balcony handrails and hold the form of these three-layered planes . . .”

So, to me at least, the West Tower is unobjectionable, except it really needs a name.  Wouldn't everyone want to be able say they live at Goose Crossing?

But what about the other two towers?  In May, the architects seemed, understandably, enamored of their own work.  Clarke talked about “our notion that the taller buildings should be tapered at the  bottom and at the top.  They should go in a sail-like fashion so that they reduce in size as they reach the ground, reduce in size as they reach the sky and in that way they become unique and iconic elements in the Chicago skyline . . .  that curved form could be very, very powerful.”  It's intended as a link to Wolf Point's maritime past, but I doubt it will grasped by anyone who hasn't had the concept explained to them beforehand.

And despite what the carefully controlled renderings would suggest, the other two towers are massive, especially compared to the first phase West Tower.  They're 50 to 80% taller than the West Tower, and hold over seven times the square footage.  The East Tower is especially tubby, but since its also at the northernmost point of the site, and not scheduled until Phase III, let's let it go for now.

Phase II is a different story.  The Master plan refers to it as the “Iconic South Tower”.  I call it “The Mothership”.  At 950 feet, it would be the eighth tallest building in Chicago, and have up to half again as much square footage as 350 North Orleans to the north.  Its not that stats, however, but the siting that give the The Mothership its unprecedented prominence.  Which leads me to three observations:

I. The Mothership needs to be moved back from rivers edge.

The Wolf Point master plan's objective of maximizing space between the three towers is admirable, but it shouldn't be achieved at the expense of crushing the vistas down the Chicago river.  Again, Wolf Point is a peninsula that demarcates the turn of the river, south and north.  Up until now, it's been visually porous.  You can see over and beyond it, to the sense of the city continuing out into the distance.  In the new master plan, the huge, tall towers build up a concluding mesa, a visual wall obscuring the progression of the urban fabric.

This is the one rendering from the official presentation that gives you an idea of what it will be like,  centered from a perspective north of the river along Wacker Drive . . .

That doesn't entirely give you a feel of the change of the vista down the river, so I created this crude mockup . . .

Don't bite my head off - the scale and placement are wildly approximate.  (If someone wants to volunteer to give me something more accurately rendered, I'll be glad to share it.) There's no shortage of tall buildings along the river, but The Mothership will be the first to be thrust into it, completely redefining one Chicago's most historic vistas.

Is it too much to ask that it's presence be not quite so aggressive?  An argument could be made that The Mothership, rather than pointing due south, would better be angled to the southwest to demarcate the river's turning.

II.  The informal edge should survive.

When its come to developers, to paraphrase Robert Frost, something there is that doesn't love a natural riverbank.

 “We sort of like the look of this kind of accidental, natural riverbank,” Ted Wolff said in May.  “It's eroding, OK.  It's unsustainable to us.  We've already lost 5,000 square feet of developable land just because of the water lapping ever so incessantly at the base there. We are proposing a bulkhead.  We are proposing the very condition you see all along the main branch , all along the south branch and through much of the north branch where it is more developed.  And so that's pretty clear that's what we need to do to develop this as an urban riverwalk, and we think that's the best way to do, to get people to the water's edge.  We want people at the promenade.  We want them at the railing.  Like when you're in a cruise ship, or when you're on a roof garden, you want to get out  to that balcony , you want to get to the railing that's the alpha spot to be.  That's where the excitement is, not to be held back by a bushy, shruby riverbank.”

No one likes their property just floating away, and there's no denying that structured walks are the standard all up and down the river.  To me, however,  that's all the more argument not to make the last stretch that's different the same as everywhere else.

As I've written before, I find the slice of the riverwalk on the south bank from Michigan Avenue east to be especially refreshing and reinvigorating.  Only a small portion of the riverbank is natural, but it doesn't have the usual feel of something planned and controlled down to the last detail.   When I see people sitting happily on the movable seating, watching traffic on the river go by, it's like a scene out of a painting by Renoir.

Wolf Point's four points of uniqueness - as a peninsula in the Chicago river, as the site of the city's earliest settlement, as the “bend” that eases the river into its branches, and the “Y’ in the official symbol of the city - deserves something beyond the standard treatment, no matter how well executed.

The standard river promenade, that "alpha" point of visual, visceral urban excitement?  By all means.  But to use it to erase the last remnant of the natural state from which Chicago arose is not so much an enhancement, as an impoverishing.  Is the soft, natural edge of today's Wolf Point a direct link to Miller's Tavern?  No, it's a re-creation.  But even so, it's a necessary antidote to the mistaken, if pervasive misconception that a great city arises out of order alone.  Improvisation is the creative spark that fuels the growth of cities, and it should be allowed to endure at Wolf Point, in a generous outlying bib to the formal promenade, where nature, lightly guided, may continue to take its course, and people can make their own paths.

III. The Mothership should be an “iconic” design in deed as well as in word.

The other thing you'll notice from all the renderings is that, architects' protestations notwithstanding, this is a design more workmanlike than inspired.  For 300 North LaSalle, one of many towers along the river, that was more than enough.  For the iconically strategic site that is Wolf Point, it falls far short.

When he looks at The Mothership, Fred Clarke sees a poetic, architectural vision of a great billowing sail.  Do you see it?  Or do you see something that, in the last analysis, is more generic than iconic, veering dangerously close to being a supersized, upscale version of a background office tower. 

Remember Fred Clarke's words . . . 

There is really nothing like this site in the world.  It's waiting for its moment in history.

Take a good look. Past the surface glitz.  Past the slick PR.  Is this design equal to the historic moment?  On this once-in-a-lifetime blank canvass, redefining Chicago's civic character for a new century, is this really the best we can do?

Wolf Point Update: Reilly yanks proposal from December Plan Commission agenda; schedules Third Public Meeting

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 In an email to his constituents, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly announced he has requested the Chicago Plan Commission defer consideration of proposals for the development of Wolf Point from its December agenda.  Instead, he will be calling a third public meeting on the evening of December 20th to review the revised plan.

Since deferring this item from the November Plan Commission Agenda, I have spent the past week meeting with the City of Chicago's planning and infrastructure departments as well as representatives from the River North and Fulton River District neighborhood associations to evaluate the new details recently released by the Developer that call for a hotel use and the potential for additional residential units on the site.

Although Hines/Kennedy have been aggressively lobbying for a process that would allow them to secure all necessary city approvals by the end of 2012, in light of the recent events, I have informed the development team that their preferred timeline is simply no longer feasible. As a result, I have again requested that the Chicago Plan Commission defer this item from its December 20th Agenda, for the purpose of vetting new information related to the Bulk Table for the site and to allow for a much-needed sixth revision to KLOA's traffic study.

Reilly yanked consideration of the three-building project from the November Plan Commission agenda after, as reported by the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky, documents obtained by Friends of Wolf Point uncovered a request for up to 1,800 hotel rooms on the site that had never before been part of the developer's documents or discussions.

Reilly, whose ward includes most of downtown, including Wolf Point, invoked his aldermanic prerogative to request the delay in consideration.  In his Thursday email, Reilly said that in the latest "Bulk Table" defining the developer's request,  the maximum hotel "keys" requested is now down to 450. The maximum allowed construction is now listed at slightly over 4,000,000 square feet, with a maximum of 1,410 residential units and 1,285 new parking spaces.

Reilly said the revised plan submitted by Wolf Point Owners LLC, representing the Hine Interests and the Kennedy family, which owns the land, not only included the previously unmentioned 1,800 hotel rooms, but "did not include the long list of previously negotiated changes and improvements to the proposal" originally submitted in May.

You can read Reilly's complete statement after the break.




Wolf Point Project Deferred Again, Off December Plan Commission Agenda
New Traffic Study in Works; Bulk Table Revised; Third Public Meeting Scheduled

Dear Neighbor:

I am writing to provide you with another update regarding the Wolf Point Proposal. As you know, last week I had this project removed from the Chicago Plan Commission's November 27th Agenda. I made this decision after previously undisclosed details were revealed by the Developer just one day before the November 27th public hearing. To make matters worse, the Filing did not include the long list of previously negotiated changes and improvements to the proposal.

Since deferring this item from the November Plan Commission Agenda, I have spent the past week meeting with the City of Chicago's planning and infrastructure departments as well as representatives from the River North and Fulton River District neighborhood associations to evaluate the new details recently released by the Developer that call for a hotel use and the potential for additional residential units on the site.

Although Hines/Kennedy have been aggressively lobbying for a process that would allow them to secure all necessary city approvals by the end of 2012, in light of the recent events, I have informed the development team that their preferred timeline is simply no longer feasible. As a result, I have again requested that the Chicago Plan Commission defer this item from its December 20th Agenda, for the purpose of vetting new information related to the Bulk Table for the site and to allow for a much-needed sixth revision to KLOA's traffic study.

We expect to receive an updated traffic study from KLOA next week, at which time I will dissect that study with the traffic engineers at CDOT to ensure the proper data and methodology were used to provide us with a realistic forecast of the revised traffic impacts associated with the details contained in the Bulk Table. 

Please click here to review a copy of the most recent draft of the Bulk Table, which reflects the past week's negotiations with the Developer. 

When reviewing the revised Bulk Table, you will note that we have dramatically reduced the maximum allowable hotel rooms on the site from the 1,800 rooms the Developer attempted to incorporate into their plans last week - down to a maximum potential number of hotel keys on the site to no more than 450 rooms. 

It is important to note that we are also requiring the Developer to memorialize a commitment that any potential hotel on the site will be a Limited Service Hotel (not a full service hotel) that does not include any conference or ballroom space. This is quite significant because a Limited Service Hotel has far less impact on parking needs and traffic circulation than a full service hotel does.

In the interest of providing full transparency, I will also be co-hosting a third public meeting in conjunction with the River North and Fulton River District associations on the date the Developer had otherwise hoped this project would be approved by the Chicago Plan Commission: Thursday, December 20th. 

Based upon the piecemeal manner in which information and important project details have been shared with the City of Chicago, my office and the constituents I represent - I have determined that this third public meeting is absolutely necessary to ensure all parties have a chance to better understand the Bulk Table and resulting traffic impacts. It is important to me that you have adequate time for review and comment on the revised proposal.

I want to also inform you of the additional, extraordinary layers of process that I will require of the Developer for Phase II and III of the project, moving forward. Phase II and Phase III will now require an additional trip to the Chicago Plan Commission for a public hearing (with opportunity for testimony and public comment) at which time members of the Plan Commission and infrastructure departments will review the specific details associated with the construction phase and make suggestions and revisions to the plans to reflect the infrastructure realities that exist in real-time when the towers are to be built.

Requiring these additional hearings before the Chicago Plan Commission is uncharacteristic of how we process all other planned developments downtown and throughout the City of Chicago. Phased developments are usually only required to submit plans for a Site Plan Approval which is processed administratively by city staff and is entirely hidden from public process. I have directed the Developer to memorialize those mandatory trips to the Plan Commission in their revised planned development documents.

I have also insisted upon an additional layer of transparency and review that is not typically required in phased developments. We are requiring that the Site Plan Approval documents must also include an updated traffic study based on data that reflects present day conditions at the time of construction for Phase II and Phase III of the project. This will ensure consideration of new or unanticipated development in the area that exists at the time of Site Plan Review.

These additional requirements are not common for the approval of phased developments in Chicago. The City does not require a new traffic study to be conducted as part of their official Site Plan Approval process. However, based upon the uniqueness of this site, the complexity of this proposal and the track record of the Development consultants, I feel obliged to require these additional layers of accountability on behalf of the constituents I was elected to represent.

By deferring this item from the December 20th Plan Commission Agenda, you will have more than a month to react to the revised Bulk Table and to review and digest the sixth revised traffic study that contemplates the "worst case scenario" of potential uses on the site for Phase II and Phase III. As soon as we have a vetted traffic study that passes muster with CDOT, I will distribute it broadly.

Once we have secured a meeting room and a start time for our third community meeting to be held on the evening of December 20th, I will share those details with you directly. Please "Save the Date" for this December 20th meeting. I hope you will consider joining us for another public review of the Wolf Point proposal.

Sincerely,


Brendan Reilly
Alderman, 42nd Ward

 had been  after revealed that developers were asking for approval for up 1,800 hotel rooms, a request that had never been a part of previous documents or discussions.

Can Signage Save Block 37?

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In his email newsletter to his constituents Monday, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly released renderings of proposed new signage for Chicago's beleaguered Block 37.  Apparently, it requires a zoning variance, so Reilly is scheduling a public meeting to invite comments.

The proposal, backed by the Chicago Loop Alliance, hardly seems radical, but it's probably not entirely adequate to the stated objective of securing new tenants to the substantially empty, 300,000-square-foot mall - only 35% leased, and continuing to hemorrhage tenants.  Just this month, Beard Papa closed its pedway cream puffery.   Alternative Shoes pulled out in August and Andy's Custard shut down in July.  Block 37 was acquired for $84 million by Los Angeles real estate firm CIM Group this past April from Bank of America, which had worsened the mall's problems by blocking a lease to the Muvico chain for a multiplex proposed for the hard-to-rent upper-floor space.

Early in the design of the mall, it was to include a wrap-around digital art work, quickly eliminated, leaving reflections of the  Ford Oriental marquee across the street the only animator of Block 37's woven metal facades . .  .

The greatest excitement Block 37 has yet experience remains the over-the-top groundbreaking ceremony then-owner Mills Corporation put on in 2005, complete with quick-change artists . .  .

. . .  dramatic interludes stranger than anything in O'Neill . . .

. . . and a grand finale with Mayor Daley, lame-clad dancers, golden shovels, and a burst of confetti . . .

In September of 2003, when Block 37 was still an empty lot,  Marshall Field's, on the other side of State Street, put on a vertical fashion show, with models rappelling down its Burnham-designed facade. It attracted 12,000 spectators, most of whom flooded into the store afterwards.  The event was named the PR event of the year.  You can see video of it here.

photos courtesy Fancy agency

More than signage, perhaps a little theatricality is what can differentiate what is now a mall without personality.

Instead of gravel and chain-link, the Sound of Crickets on former VA site?

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In his newsletter to constituents, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly announced he has concluded negotiations with Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a two-square block Streeterville lot that has remained gravel-surfaced and chain-linked since Schmidt, Garden & Erikson's Lakeside Veterans Hospital was demolished over three years ago.

Reilly, also citing support from SOAR (Streetverville Organization of Area Residents), said Northwestern has now agreed to make good on promises made to the Chicago Plan Commission to make upgrades to the site while it awaits future construction.

Alderman Reilly is very pleased to report that his persistence has paid-off. The Alderman believes we have secured a solution that not only requires NMH to deliver on their promise to provide green space on the site, but will also provide some additional streetscape improvements.

NMH will provide a 15-foot setback on the east and west sides of the site - including new wrought iron fencing to secure the entire perimeter as well as new and improved lighting. The interior planting area will include prairie grasses and wild flowers encircled by a sodded perimeter just beyond the fencing. Per the Alderman's request, NMH will also widen and repair the sidewalks on both Fairbanks and McClurg Courts.

"Improved lighting, secured fencing and chamfered corners to eliminate pedestrian blind spots" - cost undisclosed.  Allowing Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital to live on in the rendering:  priceless.

Where Chicago Public Schools deign not tread: GEMS descend on Lakeshore East

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 Ten years ago, this is what the press release said:

OWP&P has been retained by the Chicago Board of Education and has generated preliminary designs for the Lakeshore East Elementary School, the first elementary school in Chicago's central business district.  The design for the structure, which will include a community center administrated by the Chicago Park District, plays off the geometry of the park and includes a masonry exterior and a green roof.

Now, Lakeshore East is finally getting that school, but its not public.  Despite the fact that nearest public high school is Wells Academy, three miles away, the Lakeshore East project has become the Chicago flagship for the supply-chaining of education, and the first American outpost for GEMS World Academy.  GEMS was founded in Dubai in 1959, and has become operator of a large number of schools in that country and throughout the United Arab Emirates.  The for-profit company, which claims over 100,000 students in 125 countries, is going on a tear,  expanding to countries all around the world.

GEMS enters Chicago this fall with the preschool  "Little GEMS International", for children 6 weeks to 5 years, the first to open in the U.S.   It's in the building at Belden and Clark best known for its time as the home to a Tower Records superstore.

GEMS education places an emphasis on global citizenship, with a Core Values listing including:

• World Citizenship - Empowering students with a global and local perspective.
• Universal Values - Accepting that we are all different, recognising that we are all the same.
• Leadership - Developing each student’s individuality and entrepreneurial spirit in order to discover their potential.
• Forward Thinking - Developing skills for the future, our educational programmes help students to become flexible thinkers who are able to question existing thinking, adapt and creatively meet the demands of the future.

The company's growth has not been without controversy.

At a time when the Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority imposed a freeze on school fees, GEMS managed to get the government to allow it to increase its fees by 30% over three years.  In the KHDA ratings of the countries schools, the lowest-rated GEMS school came in as "Acceptable",  three more as "Good".  Both the second and third-ranking schools were GEMS operated facilities, both moving up from "Good" ratings in 2008-2009 to "Outstanding" for 2010-2011.

"The ideal circumstance, and we look forward to this in GEMs, is that you have an excess of supply," David Wilson, director of Gems Education's Asian schools has declared in an interview. One teacher at a Gems Indian Schools said the challenge was not finding good teachers, but having them agree to low salaries.A teacher advocates website reported that the increase in fees amount to 152,000 dh per month, while the increase in teacher's salary expense was 80,000 per month.

"Our chairman Sunny Varkey doesn't care about profit," Raminder Vig, director of schools at GEMS UK told Education Investor.  "He actually gives money away." GEMS has 10 schools in UK, with plans to open six more over the next 2 years.  Vig says the group has yet to make a profit in the UK.

"Margins are not the same as private schools, so you need a strong philanthropic base, and GEMs has that because our founder has pledged to educate one child free for every 10 we make money from,  Zenna Atkins told the Financial Times Jane Bird in 2010.

One commentator claims "for-profit international schools will be the way of the future."  How many years away are we from having our schools controlled by global corporate conglomerates?  GEMS is the Nordstrom's beachhead.  Can the Walmarting of American education be far behind?

No price tag has been published for the new construction at Lakeshore East, but there's no doubt that it's not being done on the cheap, with not one, but two buildings designed by  bKl architecture, the successor firm to Brininstool and Lynch, with former SOM executive Tom Kerwin.

The first building, fast-tracked for a 2013 opening, will serve students from Kindergarten to 4th grade, will be a 9 story structure just west of the Tides.  It rises nine stories - 153 feet - from a 10,000 square-foot site, with a total of 82,000 square feet of classrooms and facilities.  The entrance is on the lower level of the Lakeshore East Park, along Water Street.  The green roof features a play area.

The real gold plate comes with the second building, to be completed sometime in 2014 on East Wacker Drive, sandwiched between the under-construction 430 foot-high Coast apartment tower, also designed by bKl,  and another residential high-rise to be named later on the now vacant lot to the east.  This school will serve students from grades 5 through 12.  The site is 24,000 square-feet.

 The building rises 13 stories above Wacker.  Although the Lakefront Ordinance document specifies "no basement", the structure actually has multiple floors below Upper Wacker, including 2 levels of public parking, and a spacious"Student Arrival Lobby" on Lower Level 4, with a bus drop off on "sub Wacker Drive."  The expansiveness of the curriculum is inferred by the spaces of the building, which include a large swimming pool (with a viewing deck at the Upper Wacker entrance level), an equally large auditorium, complete with Scene and Stage shops, and a 235 square-foot changing room.  There are separate rooms for instrumental and choral music, a "3D Art Classroom", a room for "Digital Art", a "Black Box" space, and a 3,000 square-foot roof play area on Level 14.

The curtain wall facades feature vertical elements of different widths in three different colors.  It will be interesting to see how these play out.  The color scheme evokes not entirely comfortable memories of the Thompson Center palette.  On the Phase I building, none of the verticals extend the full height of building, which probably serves to de-emphasize the height, but it's hard to tell from just one rendering just how well it will all work out.  The Phase II building is more direct about its verticality.  Like the Phase I structure, it features one setback.  As with the new Lurie Hospital, the playful facade resists resolving into the traditional rectangular glass box tower.

On July 25th, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly will be hosting a community on the project, 5:30 P.M., at the Radisson Blu Aqua Chicago Hotel, 221 N. Columbus.