I'd be watching for permits and activity down this way. Person I know who lives adjacent to site mentioned recently that notices went out early this month that stated something like (iirc) construction will be beginning in the next several weeks, as early as (I think) the end of May. While I don't think that will be achieved, June would seem to be fully in play for at least major site prep to begin.....

My guess would be that this one starts construction officially before Vista does....(maybe by a few weeks-1.5 months or so?).....

This one should start before Wanda. I bet caissons start sometime around Sep/Oct.

Wanda should start in June or July I believe.

I'm 40+ and married and have zero cars and am a downtown homeowner. That's just reality.

Perhaps not early-20s, but you might be surprised how many late-20s and 30-somethings who have both the money for and the interest in a development like this one. As long as we're throwing around anecdotes, it was a 26-year-old who bought the $800,000 unfinished condo next to me and poured another half-million into making it his own. I think that's probably well within the price point of this development.

It's a PD, is it not? A PD can negotiate that, can it not?

It's also worth noting that the City has put hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in investments into the area immediately surrounding that, a good chunk of that investment is targeted toward reducing driving. When a city invests in allowing, even encouraging, a car-free or car-light lifestyle, it is a waste of public money to then require parking and not irrational to even actively limit it. The price paid almost doesn't matter, since at all price points there will be some people who don't need or want a car, and they should not have to both subsidize investment in car-free areas AND also pay additional money for a place that can accommodate a car the do not want. I'm not necessarily against letting developers make market-oriented decisions about parking, but I'm also definitely not against it if the City were to actively discourage parking at sites that can support car-free living.

this is an exciting one.. skyline booster

Yeah, actually there's a bunch of people in their 20s and 30s in the city with a lot more money than you'd expect. Mostly traders. Some of the people buying units in 4 E Elm, which is minimum of $2.5M are in their late 20s and early 30s working for firms like Jump.

Anyone have some info on when this one is supposed to start?

^ I'd been expecting it to be before the end of this month.......so, that's not going to happen apparently. Would definitely expect groundbreaking in July.....

Has any site work begun over here yet?

Perhaps pushed back to August now (as Vista)?......

I walk past this site every day and haven't seen any movement at all.

IDK if this was posted in the past. Found it on the Vinoly site.


PDF with some data/renderings: http://vinoly.com/wp-content/uploads...iana_FINAL.pdf

http://vinoly.com/wp-content/uploads...-1778x1000.jpg
Credit: http://vinoly.com/works/1200-s-indiana-avenue/

This must have recently been uploaded to the Vinoly site as I was there last week and it wasn't on the page.

Perhaps when looking for permits, 113 E. Roosevelt as well as 1200 S. Indiana should be used.

The south loop is really posed for some serious changes in the coming years. Can you imagine with Essex tower, jahn tower, the 2nd taller tower of this project, and everything going on just east of the river on those huge parcels. South loop is bulking up big time and it's going to naturally uniform itself to the rest of the skyline, making it look that much bigger.

[QUOTE=chris08876;7523554]IDK if this was posted in the past. Found it on the Vinoly site.


PDF with some data/renderings: http://vinoly.com/wp-content/uploads...iana_FINAL.pdf

http://vinoly.com/wp-content/uploads...-1778x1000.jpg
Credit: http://vinoly.com/works/1200-s-indiana-avenue/[/QU
Btw any updates on this project start? I thought it was to begin soon like this summer?

[QUOTE=go go white sox;7524165]If there were an update, it would have been posted.

So I sent an email to a representative of Crescent Heights, and they've just responded...

According to my source, we "SHOULD" see activity toward the end of October.

I's have to be dotted and T's crossed when it comes to projects of this size.

My friend has been working on this tower. It looks nice, the quality and materials are going to be great. But imo, stylistically it looks like it's from 30 years ago.

Good, everything today sucks. I'd rather have the funky shit from back then, though I'd prefer 40 years ago. I would like this to turn out like a 850' version of UIC tower with real limestone used instead of concrete. Such a building would likely take on a Marina City like "sky garden" patina with all these terraces and balconies. Or maybe like an extruded Contemporaine. Sign me up. Maybe both will get build and be the love child of Sears Tower, Marina City, and the World Trade Center. Also channeling those cool Mies concrete towers in Indian Village.

Yeah the UIC towers concrete is really aging horribly, not sure what they can do to fix that though

I agree that's really when Chicago still had that edge to it big bold buildings. I anyways envisioned Chicago building a third all black supertall to compliment Sears and Hancock, how badass would that look in our skyline!

That'll be for the redevelopment of the Jewel site at Wabash/Roosevelt. :cheers:

No it's not, it just needs to be maintained. That's what happens to 50 year old concrete that has been exposed to the elements. If you actually go up there and grind and patch the spawling it would look just fine. This was one of the same bullshit arguments used to justify destroying Prentice. "Oh there's chips and cracks in the concrete, it's falling down".

A. No it's not, it would take an awful lot to compromise cast in place concrete like this.

B. If you actually performed regular maintenance on the building it wouldn't be an issue. Do you think brick is any different after 50 years without any tuckpointing? No, that shit will be cracking and the mortar falling out.

Alas, I'm hearing that the reconstruction plan for University Hall will get rid of half the vertical concrete elements to save money on patching. Get your photos now. When they're finished, it'll have all the distinction of a bank building in Oklahoma City.

https://media.giphy.com/media/12XMGIWtrHBl5e/giphy.gif
source: https://media.giphy.com/media/12XMGIWtrHBl5e/giphy.gif

Depressing but better than demo and sounds slight less awful than the aesthetic lobotomy performed on the smaller buildings in the original campus.

Question to the engineers out there. How much would the cost be to cover the train tracks through Grant Park? Say, if they they were to go the T-beam route as they did, on a much smaller scale, for riverpoint and 151. Would it have to come out of private founds? I couldnt see the city fronting money on a project that size. Anyway, if you have any idea of what it cost to cover either 151 or riverpoint tracks. I'm sure Friends of the Train Tracks would oppose that idea anyway.

Figure out how much Millennium Park cost and then quadruple it.

^ I doubt that. MP was built over an active parking garage, plus it contains a lot of iconic cultural amenities that wouldn't be included in a simple plan to create park space above the train tracks

The tracks don't offend me. They're in a retained trench, they're pretty much out of sight unless you're right on top of them.

I will make an exception south of 11th Place... there is no retaining wall there and the big ditch fans out to a broad ugly valley where Central Station used to be. I wouldn't mind seeing that part covered to create a "Millennium Park South" and create a solid destination at the southwest corner of the park to mirror the northwest corner.

Yeah, so first of all - inflation. Millennium Park was finished more than 10 years ago.

Second, you of course know how there are elevation changes at Millennium Park. Look at the satellite view and line those up with the train tracks. So, a real basic "cover the tracks with grass" is going to require a lot of stairs and ramps for ADA compatibility. And at the point all you have is some grass and who is going to spend money on that? So, as Ardecila points out, you might as well do a Millennium Park South and add at least a basic level of amenities (that can be sponsored by corporations of course), probably tied into a full-service train station at 11th. This would be nice to have for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's going to cost MP*4 on the low end.

^ Agree, plus many of the existing stairs and ramps are deteriorating and would either need major repairs or total replacement to blend into any future landscape plan. Then you have all the mechanical systems to exhaust the area beneath

No exhaust system needed because the trains are electric powered.

^ Imagine a time where all rail is electric powered - even where there's no catenary. Maybe Elon Musk's battery r&d will lead to locomotives laden with their own electricity source (already trucks and buses are on the horizon). And if the locomotives' batteries couldn't recharge enough at the stations or endpoints of their Metra runs, then self-driving / self-switching technology could seamlessly swap in a fresh locomotive!

(Wrong thread though, sorry.)

The passenger trains are electric, but the trains and vehicles that Metra uses to service the line are not.

It's probably only a matter of time. Emissions requirements are already forcing changes to the diesel portion of the locomotive. I can imagine that the next phase is to give up on trying to make specialized large, clean diesels due to prohibitive R&D costs. So, you install banks of commodity diesels from the auto/truck industry that have already been certified to meet requirements. These could be started and stopped on demand to ensure total electrical power is adequate for traction motors. Once you have that system in place, you can replace individual diesel motors with battery packs depending on the needs of the individual railroad operator. And boom, there you go.

Metra could go half and half, focusing on batteries near stations so they can be zero emission except when cruising in open air, when they would use diesel.

when will we have "nanners" for 113 E Roos?

Roosevelt & Indiana... A rep several weeks ago told me there could be movement in October, but we'll see.

an october start would be very cool.

could we really be so lucky to get construction starts on 3 towers over 800' in one calendar year?

i don't think that's ever happened before in chicago.

<fingers crossed>

Yeah if it did happen before it would have been when 2 Prudential, AT&T(now just Franklin Center), 900 N Michigan, and 311 S Wabash were all completed within about a year of each other. Don't remember their start dates though

accoridng to the SSP data base:

franklin center - 1987 construction start
900 n michigan - 1987 construction start
2 prudential - 1988 construction start
311 s wacker - 1988 construction start


so that was a very tight cluster of 800+' tower construction starts, but technically not in one calendar year. and none of those four are legit supertalls like vista, so if 113 s roosevelt does pop in october (or even november/decemeber), 2016 could go down as the greatest year for 800+' skyscraper construction starts in chicago history!

I believe they have changed the address of this to 1200 S Indiana.

Probably it will have an actual name once they start the marketing... but the primary residential entrance is on the Indiana side, so the city probably insisted on it.

^ got it, thanks for the update.

It'll never have the depth of the Loop, though, as long as Dearborn Park(s) are around.

When you say legit supertalls I assume you mean roof breaking supertall height right? Because two of those 4 are currently classified as supertalls due to their spires.

And yeah, the city's skyline could really evolve drastically in the coming 5 years. :happybirthday::happybirthday::happybirthday:

yeah, i was talking about the whole spire vs. roof thing. i probably should have used the word "unqualified" instead of "legit". no one can argue that vista will stand more than 1,000' above the ground, but those other two are more open to interpretation.

in any event, i really hope bvic's insider source about this one starting up in october is on the level.

^ Same, the South Loop got all those proposals, but so many of them have been dragging their feet it feels, maybe I'm just impatient

Did the address change I thought it was officially 113 e Roosevelt Rd?

For real? That was addressed literally six posts back.

Got some intel that this miiigght not be going ahead.

hmmmmmm..... conflicting inside sources..... who to believe......


i know who i WANT to believe ;)