Quote:
Originally Posted by k1052
There is still quite a bit of room in the west loop between the Kennedy and the river for 50ish floor office towers with 1M-1.5M square feet plus. I sincerely doubt new office supertalls are going to be realistic anytime soon.
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They never will be. This isn't Manhattan, we don't have the land constraints to justify office supertalls on purely financial grounds; they're too inefficient. We have 4 office supertalls in Chicago. At least two of those supertalls were built as corporate vanity projects (for Sears and Standard Oil). All four were built in a different era when budgets allowed far more lavish buildings and tenants were willing to pay a premium to be in one of the tallest buildings.
Today, tenants are paying a premium to be in Fulton Market; they couldn't care less how tall their building is, so developers put up midrises that are super efficient and relatively inexpensive to build. There's also a steady stream of new buildings along Wacker and the South Branch for successful, more conservative companies (law firms, banks, etc) - these are taller because the land is more expensive, but still top out in the 700-800' sweet spot.