October 25, 2017

thanks for photographing as little of the parking lot in the right foreground as possible

It's a real shame that Loews and this building couldn't have added something (anything!) facing that little pocket park. There's no ground floor retail even. And then the horrendous bottom of the Sheraton doesn't help.

It's nice to get rid of the parking lots, but the way they've done it Streeterville will always be soulless.

I mean they have massive conference/ballroom areas in both buildings, what the hell do you expect them to do?

The way this building anchors the corner of Illinois and Park is quite wonderful (when on the street in person). The one vertex of the ellipse of the tower portion feels like the prow of a giant ship, and the low-rise wings really humanize its presence at street level. The materials look very cheap, but the way it's sited and massed is very pleasing when viewing it at ground level. I was very surprised.

https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/...5-910x1024.png


Your general sentiment is heard, and I agree, but it does look like 465 N Park will at least have some retail on the corner facing the park/North Park Drive. But yeah Loews with that wall and dead hallway space fronting the park :yuck:

Yeah Ogden Plaza is basically just a median strip between the fairly lightly used Park Dr and the Columbus autosewer.

Hopefully the retail component of 465 N Park is engaging to pedestrians. That, and if something with good street frontage goes up at the SW corner of Columbus and Illinois, it would go far in helping change the feel of this block.

So do, say, the Plaza or Palace or any number of hotels in New York. Hell, so does the Drake. And they don't interact with the street this way.

That is a pathetically lazy excuse.

^ As others have said, there will be ground level retail.

The developers of the Loews smartly realized that there is no point in having retail facing that little north-south St it's on.

Not every single block needs shops on it. I don't recall that being the case in (gasp! How dare I blaspheme everybody's hard-on of a city?) New York either.

Oct 17

From the lobby of ABA (321 N Clark)


Oct 18



Street level retail.

Exactly, and to add to this point, the Sheraton was built when Streeterville was basically empty lots and rats. Hindsight is 20-20, but acting like they should have built retail spots on a building there thinking that maybe in 30 years they could finally fill out the slots? Yeah right

Oct 30

^ Awesome shots, Harry! That last one makes an awesome juxtaposition.

October 31, 2017

Adrian Smith did it at NBC Tower. For the longest time, they had to fill the space with an NBC souvenir shop that sold trinkets to Jerry Springer's and Steve Harvey's audiences. I'm not sure if that's still in operation now that the only show being taped there is Judge Mathis....

And now it needs to be fixed. Either retrofitted, or the building torn down and replaced.

Whatever. I don't really care about Streeterville. There's nothing interesting over there and no reason to go. I guess it seems to be a good place for out of towners who want a city pied a terre (I know two such families).

But creating more inviting public spaces and a more interesting street level environment could, potentially, make it a place that people have reason to visit in the future. Perhaps even that is a stretch, given that pretty much all of the lots are huge parcels with major landlords, and therefore unlikely to lease space for anything interesting.

^ Streeterville has been getting better. That’s at least my experience.

I don’t like the long blocks, but there is more and more retail.

I for one don’t think every single street needs to be lined with shops. And realistically I don’t see that happening

Yeah, Ohio's a nice street to walk down, but I'm always struck at the lack of restaurant options for such a dense neighborhood of relatively high wealth.

There's GreenRiver, which only opened in the last couple years, and the MCA just opened Marisol with Jason Hammel of Lula. There's also a great new bar at the Arts Club, but you need to be or be with a member: http://www.interiordesign.net/articl...ian-influence/

By my estimation there's about 5 more floors to go before this thing is topped out..

November 6, 2017



November 7, 2017