Nope, just working from a less reputable source than Crain's.

If Crain's says Sterling Bay tried to buy the Post Office outright, I'll believe them.

Should the supertall in the site's diagram be changed to stale proposal or cancelled?

It should be changed to fantasy, as that's all it ever was.

New York's example makes the most sense for Old Post Office
 

the Moynihan Station. With a boost from stimulus funds, the old Farley Post Office will be redeveloped into a train station in New York City.

http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot....ice-reuse.html

we need that extra rail capacity, desperately!

Moynihan isn't adding any extra rail capacity, it gets Amtrak riders/operations out of Penn station.

point is that done correctly, Chicago could.

As per the usual, this is the only activity we ever see here :( :

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...125-story.html

^ Plan B?? Or, rather, C....or D??

How would this work with an active freeway under the building? subway?

I have an idea: turn the damn thing back into a post office

would be great if there wasnt a giant modern facility which rendered it obsolete next door

^and which is now mostly vacant as well. No mail processing is taking place in Chicago any more. Some of the space is being used for carrier routes who have moved out of the Loop facility.

So are we bound to soon have 2 massive, abandon former post offices right next to each other?

same way the PO functioned with the active expressway, quite well. . .

the eisenhower exp. is somewhat elevated. besides there seems to be plenty of space on either side which rail passengers would not necessarily have to straddle the exp; passengers could flow above/below that cut. the tracks (metra/amtrak) are already in place at ground level. the subway of course, is 40 ft. below. . . .

i contacted robert munson of urbanophile, who has much expertise in rail station analysis, and suggested this. he agreed its a great idea to turn the old PO into a transit center though he said he'd look into the actual feasibility of doing so. btw, this is in no way an original concept, it had been proposed as far back as when the new PO opened, and was attached to some type of casino deal, i believe.

besides this building is so large, it could handle multi-purpose re-use and still have space left over. . .

After all that talk about how Novak should have been nailed harder for knocking down that cottage without permits, it's really situations like this which the city should save it's penalties for. The city should massively fine Davies for this fire breaking out. Leaving buildings sit empty is a massive drag on the rest of the city not only in terms of the broken window effect, but also in terms of city resources. He should have to pay for every dime the Fire Department and emergency services spent responding to this fire and then be assessed a fat fine on top of it. Same goes for other landmarked white elephant buildings around the city like the Uptown Theater. If you are going to squat on a historically valuable property and allow it to decompose, then you should be massively fined for any incidents that occur while it is under your watch.

Hopefully this would have a "shit or get off the pot" effect on some of these land bankers.

^ Nah. The city abuses property owners enough as it is. I think our out of proportion high property taxes are enough

I can kinda sorta see your point of view on the Post Office seeing as the Sterling Bay deal should have happened and was a squandered opportunity.

With Uptown Theater I don't because there was no funded viable plan put forth put forth to renovate it. I live in Uptown and I personally think in time it will happen but its just not its time yet. All the momentum is in the right direction.

In general, not just talking about mega developers, but property owners in general (because laws are for everyone) if you start enacting some type of penalty for vacancy these properties will eventually go ownerless and eventually meet the wrecking ball, on taxpayer's dime or more likely sit vacant and continue dilapidate due to lack of funds for demolition.

No one is going to pay penalties on properties that aren't making them money, I think a vacancy tax/fine/penalty is a misguided policy and would not have the intended result. Also regardless if the property is vacant Davies pays taxes on it and those taxes pay for the fire service that every taxpayer is entitled to.

True, but a penalty for having a non-functional standpipes in an enormous building in such a built-up area should be severe enough to spur action and get the building's fire suppression systems at least functional, or else this is a disaster waiting to happen.

This I can support maybe a penalty depended on the size of the building if there was a fire code violation. I can even, although barely, support there being a responsibility to pay the Fire Department's expenses or a fee if there was a fire code violation withstanding.

Crain's is reporting today that Davies is putting the building up for sale, having hired a London-based broker - the article claimed that they don't know how much he'll be asking for it, but apparently, he rejected a $150 million offer earlier this year.

This guy is a total POS - he got the building at auction, for less than half of his winning bid and he thinks he can get $150M?? It's gonna cost that much just to fix all of the massive issues within the building, let alone develop it into something worthwhile.