I think it's pretty safe to assume that they are not planning a supertall on site. However I also would expect that any reconfiguration and rehabilation work would be done so that it would not preclude a high-rise 2 years or 20 years from now. With the zoning change any seller would want to maximize potential usage and square footage down the road to get maximum return at sale.

How are people excited about this? Looks like they're just sprucing and remodeling the building a bit? I expected more. I'm glad its not getting demolished, but still.

what do you think the ideal outcome would have been if you dont want it demolished?

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/8ca/...uare.w1200.jpg
Source: Succession via NYmag

Love it. Great news. As far as the supertall disappointees go - this will just displaces that potential to a different location. I think with the city's deadline for 130 N Franklin will get something u/c there in 2022. Also this means JP Morgan will not be leasing here and they still need up to 1 million sqft as they previously said and will have to build that somewhere else. I actually think JP Morgan will build on 130 N Franklin but we'll see.

This truly is great news. . . looks like they're going to modernize the facade and create a curtain wall to seal off the office space from the atrium, which was what I was hoping they would ultimately do. . .

. . .

I’m pleased with this development proposal despite that I don’t care much for the Thompson center, only the atrium. But the improvements look great.

Not too surprising that a contingent of people on a website called skyscraperpage aren't satisfied with this but they are wrong. Nobody will ever build something like the Thomson Center again because quite frankly it should have never been built in the first place. The design sacrificed economics for architecture. It's too bad the city had to basically give the thing away to save it, but I'm A-ok with this.

The current Thompson Center looks like shit because it's facade and interior have been left to decay for decades. Once completed this should look like a modernist gem next to the Daley Center and City Hall. What a trio that will make.

Yep. . . we were lucky to have it in the first place. . .

. . .

i cleared out all of the city vs. city crap.

please stay on topic folks.



what a glorious day to be a chicagoan!!!

What a remarkable outcome! I wonder what happens to the DuBuffet sculpture (Monument with Standing Beast)?

This post isn't visible under the Chicago tag, I have to click the link you put in the general developments tab to look at this.

Yes, it truly is. . .

. . .

I only hope a semblance of the food court's dumpiness is preserved. love that place.

This is functionally the same as Jahn's plan to preserve the building. Reclad the building in a high-performance curtain wall and make the atrium open-air like the Sony Center in Berlin.

Jahn proposed adding a highrise too, but that was really just a sweetener to make redevelopment more financially feasible. Apparently it is feasible without the highrise, which means more of the plaza space can be preserved.

I have some issues with the design as rendered... it looks sterile AF and has none of the personality of the original design. The usefulness of the atrium is greatly reduced by making it open-air, especially in winter. And it appears like this will lose a lot of the things that made Thompson Center great. The atrium provided a site for civic participation, and the food court provided some of the few affordable lunch options in the Loop. The replacement looks pretty soulless and corporate. BUT this is also highly schematic. Those huge 50' wide pices of glass will get more detail, and I'm sure the program for the building will be refined as well so there is lots of room for improvement.

This. 100 times this. So pleased that the building isn't coming down.

i completely missed that the atrium would now be open air. agree with a lot of what you said. but yeah still too conceptual to really tell what that space would look like in practice. but it does mean we'd lose one of our few indoor public gathering spaces that had useage during winter. i see that being pretty barren most of the year.

but i guess it makes sense. they clearly figured theres no economical way to continue heating/cooling that space.