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ARCHITECTURE
High hopes, and a call for a smart debate
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published April 29, 2007
A lot of people in Evanston, I suspect, are going to be horrified by the proposal for a 523-foot-tall condominium tower that would be the tallest building in Chicago's suburbs. But here's some friendly advice: Cool your jets. This is a promising plan by a skilled architect, and -- while it is far from perfect --
it should not be shouted down by a band of NIMBYs.
The plan, made public Thursday by developers James Klutznick and Tim Anderson, articulates a clear choice for Evanston and other suburbs around the country that have nowhere to grow but up.
They can grow with high-rises that are tall and thin or they can grow with high-rises that are short and squat.
There's no pat answer for every suburb -- or every city. Still, this sliver-thin tower, as shaped by Laurence Booth and George Halik of the Chicago firm Booth Hansen,
looks well-suited to its site, a triangular block bounded by Church Street, Sherman Avenue and Orrington Avenue. The block, with the crumbling Fountain Square Plaza at its southern end, sits in the heart of downtown Evanston.
If you're going to build tall, this block -- specifically its north end -- is the place. As a rendering shows, the plan turns the tier-topped but hulking Sherman Plaza tower to the west and the coolly modern Chase Building to the east into bookends that would frame its skyward leap. It would give the awkward Evanston skyline a clear focus -- a top, as it were, to the urban wedding cake.
Opponents who would fight a proposed zoning change -- the block has a height limit of 125 feet -- risk repeating the mistake Evanston made when it forced architect-developer David Holey to trim 20 stories from a proposed 36-story residential tower at the north end of downtown. The result: a massive, city-deadening wall.
Booth, whose projects include the new 30 West Oak condos, offers a better way: Not the old modernist model of the tower sitting on a barren plaza, but a more enlightened modernism that seeks to deftly insert towers into the fabric of the city -- and preserve the integrity of what is already there.
Significantly, this plan saves all of the Hahn Building, a three-story, classically decorated landmark in the middle of the block. That's far preferable to performing a stage-set "facade-ectomy" that would clip the Hahn Building's facade onto a large new structure, as another developer eyeing the block suggested last year.
There are good strokes, too, for the south end of the block, now dominated by a brooding midrise office building. Under the developers' plan, that old building would be replaced by a restaurant building in tune with the Hahn Building's street-friendly scale. Evanston would use the added tax dollars the project generates to enliven the moribund plaza with umbrella-topped tables and a new modern fountain.
But the plan remains a long way from realizing such promise, which means city officials and civic activists have every right to press the developers to ensure the highest quality.
Problem one is the lack of visual integration between the tower and the five-story parking garage and retail podium on which it would sit. This is "plop architecture." Booth needs to do better, making it appear that the tower and the podium are not two separate things.
Problem two is the prospect of what I call "generic urbanism" -- visually bland buildings whose retail spaces are so expensive that they wind up being filled by the same national chains you see everywhere. Sherman Plaza, done by the same developers, commits this sin. A much better model: Downtown Evanston's handsomely renovated Marshall Field & Co. building, a 1929 art deco/beaux-arts gem.
Problem three is really a caveat:
This tower would have a mostly glass skin, which will, ideally, emphasize its lightness. But a cheap skin can look like a cheap suit. Exhibit A: the distorted reflections emanating from some exterior glass on the still-under-construction Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. If you want to build tall, you had better build well.
So let the debate begin on this promising plan. But let it proceed intelligently, not emotionally.
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bkamin@tribune.com
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