I mean, if demand for hotel rooms in this area was strong, we'd see entitled project like Union Station renovation and Toyoko Inn move forward...

Likely they will renovate the Holiday Inn per the brand prototype:
http://design.holidayinn.com/downloa...l_May_2019.pdf

I don’t think they will do the full exterior like the proto book but probably will repaint the existing building and build the porte-cochere.

Yeah, except your statement is magically assuming things about these private companies and their current financial standings, their current strategy, etc. Especially companies that are not based here and have investments in many other places. Just because there can be demand somewhere doesn't mean any company has the actual means to complete a project. There's so many factors that go into this - you cannot get hung up on one company not being able to get a project off the ground and think it always has to do with the area, and not the company itself.

Well, he listed two hotels, not just one. And we've heard that Riverside Investments put the Union Station hotel on hold because of weak demand.

The Holiday Inn project is not really a good indicator of demand for hotel rooms or appetite for new construction. Major brand hotels are franchised and they are required to sink money into major renovations periodically. If they don't, they lose the "flag" and they have to rebrand as some sketchy independent. Switching brands won't help, because the new brand will also demand costly renovations. Given how sad that Holiday Inn looked, I'm guessing it was dangerously close to losing its flag before the new owners came in.

Food hall is opening next month!

https://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...5re-story.html

May 9, 2022

That's a hefty corporate directory! I am still in somewhat of a stunned disbelief that we went from almost losing the OPO in part or in full to redevelopment, and here we are with a wildly successful total restoration of the building.

I can only hope we see the same for 202 and 220 S State :(

Now let's save the Sugar House.

Really? Perhaps it could be made into a cool multi-level restaurant space or retail niche but the building itself is not overly remarkable IMO. If there is a market to put up even a small office tower in its place I would prefer that instead. There could be a decent market to couple a new office building that couples with the amenities of the rehabbed OPO.

Either way I think the plan has to do something decisively with the Sugar House way or another in the next few years. I don't think a dilapidated Sugar House lying next to a glistening rehabbed OBO is the optic oddity the owners relish.

Why? We have plenty of wonderful old factory buildings like Cassidy Tire (RIP), but Sugar House ain't one of them. Wholly undistinguished industrial building. Either replace it with something new, or tear it down and put in more riverfront park space. Keep the Chicago & Alton arch as a monument somewhere.

Helmut Jahn proposed a high speed rail station there, using the old mail platforms under OPO. That would be a good idea too...

I'm fine with it going down if it is replaced by something substantial (height, density, architecturally appealing, etc.). But if they are tearing it down and replacing it with something of similar height/footprint (or worse, nothing), then I would be against that.

Very nice. Does anyone know tiimeline or if the east side completion of the OPO's riverfront is still happening? I would assume they'd wait until the work on the west side of the building is completed first anyway. Or is this is all it's going to be?

eg like here https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/9/18...ice-renderings which looks both amazing and expensive.

This is it, man... all we get for the east side.

Officially this is considered an "interim" landscape because the PD allows the owner to put a building here as well as the Sugar House site.

The west side landscaping is... not great. North of Congress will be a narrow car turnaround for dropoffs. Reminds me of Aon Center's narrow little dropoff on Lake St. South of Congress won't even be landscaped, it'll just go back to being a loading area.

That link shows the 2017 iteration but also a 2016 iteration. I find it funny that they looked at the early version and said 'this isn't good enough, let's do something better'.... only to do mostly nothing.

There are several old rail platforms under this building. my pipe dream is they finally make union station allow trains to pass through, and this becomes the site of a fantastic new high speed rail station.

What changed? This is unacceptable unless the planned "interim" is less than 5 years.

I don't know what you mean by "unacceptable" but if you remember the decades that this property sat as a crumbling eyesore, a plaza like this is perfectly acceptable. I don't know the long-term plans of 601W (the developer) but I'm sure they don't want to give up their development rights for the riverfront parcels so they have to call this an interim landscape. I assume they want to preserve maximum flexibility to adapt to the changing market, but it could be 5, 10, 15 years before they build something. Office development in Chicago tends to be highly cyclical, and only a few big projects move forward in each cycle. It's even harder now that office tenants are increasingly looking outside the Loop to Fulton Market, River North, Lincoln Yards, etc.

The long-term but vague plans for Union Station add another wrinkle, because it's not clear where Amtrak will expand platforms, add vertical access down to the platforms, etc. Nobody really knows when that project will move forward.

Honestly the OPO plaza is a huge improvement over the crumbling loading area that used to be here. If the plaza sticks around for awhile and they maintain it properly, I won't complain. It works as a part of the building (outdoor dining for the food hall, riverside event space) and it preserves views of the OPO itself from the river and Wacker Drive. There's a similar "temporary" landscape that they put next to the ABN-AMRO tower on Washington/Jefferson, but it looks unlikely they will develop there anytime soon either. If it turns out Amtrak doesn't need any of this space, then 601W will probably plan an office tower on the Sugar House site with some kind of bridge over 290 and an entrance pavilion in the plaza. At that time they will probably invest in a more attractive wall facing the river.

The $1B redevelopment of OPO has been a stroke of great fortune for the city and probably barely happened. The original riverfront rendering would be great but the project is already a home run for me. It's hard to be disappointed.

Sorry, I agree it's a huge improvement just to have the OPO saved, but I am just tired of developers presenting these grand plans like the riverwalk rendering from the Curbed article. If they want to keep their options open to build additional office space, that's fine, just be transparent about it. Don't present these slick renderings about this great new public space you're not really going to build. Maybe they didn't present it that way, that's why I'm asking about what changed since they released the grandiose riverwalk renderings?