CHICAGO | 640 W Washington | 425 FT | 38 FLOORS
 

640 West Washington Street

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...411705/enhance


-640 W. Washington

-47 stories

-515’ tall

-140 parking (approximately)

-413 apartments

-$2,000,000 to $2,500,000 in tax revenue generated annually

-About $3,700,000 neighborhood opportunity bonus

- 11 affordable units on site

-$5,000,000 in lieu fee for Affordable Housing

-Wanted strong connection with industrious past of the West Loop.

-HPA Architects

-current lot about 130 cars 2019 count (85-90% occupancy day workers)

-High $3’s per square foot

-studios, ones and twos average unit size (650-700 sq ft)


https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410011/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410203/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410334/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410472/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410486/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410721/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...410821/enhance

I like it, although the people lounging by the freeway is a bit much.

It sure will be nice to see that obnoxious surface parking lot bite the dust.

I lived at R+D 659 in a south facing unit for a couple years and stared at that god awful moonscape every day.

Overall I'm okay with the design and would love to see that lot bite the dust. Creating a canyon on the Kennedy would be great too!

A pool deck 485ft right next to an expressway might not be as functional as intended, but it necessary at 'high $3's per sqft'.

Every time a surface lot gets replaced by a tower in the West Loop, the Tamale Guy gets to open a new brick and mortar location. Those are the rules, folks.

Nice to see a new thread for a proposed Chicago building!

Let's see whether Crescent Heights or Related is first to break ground...

From living at R+D 659, which also has a pool deck overlooking the kennedy trench, I can tell you it's not an issue at all. The expressway noise just becomes background, like a waterfall, and that pool deck was always crowded on sunny weekend days. The big problem was lack of late afternoon sun due to the design of the tower, so it was definitely a morning pool.

I'm sure you get used to the noise, but it's got to be awful for your lungs, no?

Looks fresh. Good quality infill.

it's 500 feet in the air and the cars themselves create airflow, can't be worse for your lungs than walking through the loop during the stagnant morning/evening commute.

Going to be amazing driving the Kennedy between these soaring skyscrapers. It's similar to the effect on Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.

This is a handsome building especially the lack of parking podium - maybe it's there but to my untrained eye I didn't see it.

They must be assuming the Kennedy will eventually get capped with a park

This is extremely inoffensive as far as podiums go.

Traffic noise or smell from a 485' pool deck will hardly be noticeable.

Nice design. Great podium. :cheers:

Wow! This tower checks off a lot of boxes on my happy list:

Tall (500+ ft for this part of the West Loop is great!)
Thin
Erases another parking lot
Helps box in 90/94
Nice street level experience


I'm fully on board :)

Circulation Map
 

I forgot to add this circulation map.

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...668998/enhance

ah I missed that the pool deck was on top of the building and not on the podium level. doh.
yeah at 500' it's totally fine.

Why is there an amenity space at ground level on Desplaines? That's totally out of the the way for building residents. Looks like part of it is a big stair for the roof deck, which maybe needed for fire code but the space is totally oversized.

Makes me wonder if there's some plan to use the "amenity" spaces as some kind of social club that is open to the public - the Desplaines space would be like a lobby to this social club.

These residential amenities are getting ridiculous. Isn't the city itself enough of an amenity?

My guess is that those are used to justify higher rents.

On the May agenda for plan commission.

A proposed Residential-Business Planned Development, submitted by 640 West Washington, LLC, for the property generally located at 640 W. Washington Boulevard. The applicant proposes to rezone the site from DX-7 (Downtown Mixed-Use District) to a Residential-Business Planned Development. The applicant proposes to construct a 47-story, 515’- tall building with 413 residential units, 217 bicycle parking spaces, 137 accessory vehicular parking spaces and approximately 8,000 square feet of retail, commercial and accessory uses on the ground floor. A 4.5 FAR (Floor Area Ratio) bonus will be taken and the overall FAR of the planned development will be 11.5.

Another boring box glass building

tbh I think it's unrealistic to expect every building to be a masterpiece, especially when developers are trying to be pragmatic economically.

I think it looks fine, and it's 500+

I’m happy that post Covid we’re still building hopefully good for the tribune tower but I like to see more 700-900 buildings.

Its not that bad. Its got a decently interesting design, its fairly tall for where its going, its helping box up the expressway, and its thin! Definitely an improvement for the neighborhood.

I believe it's actually brick.

I also think it is quite an attractive building in the renderings.

What precisely is the complaint here? That it is a building with 4 walls and windows? This doesn't fit the definition of a "glass box" to me. I mean it would be a great contrast to a lot of the beige buildings in River North and it's mostly distinct from the other buildings in the vicinity. I'm looking forward to it if it get's built.

I think it's a nice Modernist design and the brick elevates it.

It anhilates a giant ass vacant lot and starts boxing in the East wall of the Kennedy canyon. What's not to like?

Death to all parking lots!

:haha:

:cheers:

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/...on_5.20.21.pdf

The site plan on page 19 has the elevator overrun at 520'

I really liked the 'floating top' design of 640 W Washington. Looks like that is being scrapped. Was this pushback from the 'too tall NIMBY's' or just something Crescent Heights decided?

See original rendering as well as the Google Drive link from Reilly blurb above.

https://urbanize.city/chicago/post/6...ment-west-loop

Was also pretty slender/attractive from the North and South. Basically 0% of what I like from renderings ever gets built. (Edit: to be fair its more like 15% to 20%)

Also here's a link 527 W Kinzie. https://jnews.uk/merchandise-mart-ow...ouncil-member/ Everything's coming back from the dead now ha.

Another tower gets downsized...typical of Chicago. Reilly is such a garbage alderman. Can't count the number of projects he complained about and had downsized. And he's the same person who tried to propose an amendment to have the Playpen nerfed last summer because its "too loud" dude its fucking downtown go fuck off to some suburb if you hate the noises of people having fun and enjoying the short summer we have.

I'm sure NY/LA doesn't deal with this. Why does this city have 50 alderman when new york has like 10...makes no sense.

Agreed that Chicago has too many alderman and should be cut, mayby in half, but NYC has 51 council members, not 10.

Such a weird game they play. What benefit is gained from taking off 92’? The building is still the same size. It all just seems so strange, but obviously the developer is agreeing to it. So I wonder if they never really intended to have the floating top in the first place?

It’s all pretty ridiculous.

I don’t think it looks as if the reduced height was due to Reilly, at least per my read of what’s posted

^ yeah, the previous 529' design had already been approved, so this sounds like a developer-initiated height/design change, not one imposed by alder-cretin Reilly.

^ yes do not understand the downsizing on this one...Specifically when the design elements have been seriously altered.I cant stand when this constantly happens...its like bait and switch..the city needs an archicture/bulding review panel instead of alderman on top of just having less alderman all together.

The previous design was already approved by Reilly and written into the PD, so this has nothing to do with NIMBYism.

Crescent Heights likely crunched the numbers on the old design and decided it wasn't cost effective to build such a slender tower when they could accommodate the same number of units in a shorter, wider tower. I agree the new design isn't as distinctive without the "lantern" on top and I share the disappointment.

I assume they did their homework before submitting the PD, but something must have changed - maybe the market conditions required them to change the proforma or the unit mix, or construction costs went up more than expected. It takes 2-3 years at least to plan these towers, and developers have to constantly adjust as they go.

They probably had the taller version as a placeholder expecting community resistance, only to eventually go with originally planned - shorter - version as a consolation to the nimbys. . . when there was no pushback they were probably just as surprised as anyone. . . went with their originally designed and more fully sussed out plans, probably. . .

. . .

^That's what I was assuming. I wasn't really blaming the developers, but, if that's true, it just highlights how absurd the process is... add more height that you never intend to build in order to cut the tower arbitrarily shorter to appease NIMBYs.

^ it's how you play the game.

If the NIMBidiots are gonna demand their pound of flesh, why not give 'em a pound of made-up flesh that means nothing to you?

Dang, really? I thought was taller than K2...

I tuned into some of the meetings for this project and the narrow design was pitched to the NIMBYs as a selling point that preserved views for southern-facing condos at 659 W. Randolph.

So if anything the NIMBYs are getting a raw deal now because the revised tower is much chubbier. They were also bitching about not enough parking and that's been further cut down too....

If that's the game they were playing, they lost badly as I thought the lantern element really made the building and probably meant something to them (assuming that design means something to them).

Some company VP was probably like hey we can save $XYZ million if we make the tower fatter and shorter and cheapen the design. His bosses said yes and they all received bonuses.

I guess that's possible, but it's hard to say because there's no clear chain of cause-and-effect.

It's worth noting that Crescent Heights built NEMA, the city's tallest residential tower, so they are not afraid to push the limits on height when they are allowed to do so. NEMA was originally proposed at 829' and actually increased to 909' when it was eventually completed.

Urbanize reporting that this tower is now shorter and more boring:

640 W. Washington gets haircut and redesign
Lukas Kugler, Urbanize Chicago

https://urbanize.city/chicago/sites/...?itok=arjcsC1m

Or if you didn't like the hat, then maybe you like this new design.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame