Well if this gets built and completed the people that want 2,000 foot tall buildings will finally shut the f**k up. :cheers: No really those people that I am talking about are really becoming pain in the a**es.

Bill Davies is an absentee landlord who sat on several huge properties in Liverpool.

He is nothing more than a flipper. Booth is being paid to create some grandiose vision in order to get other potential buyers salivating about the site's potential, not because Davies actually has any intention of developing the place.

After seeing the plans, my suspicions were confirmed. They just flat-out don't work. Since I know Booth and his staff are far more talented than that, I'm left with the conclusion that the actual substance of the design doesn't really matter - Davies wanted something big, and he wanted it fast.

Why does this even have a thread? This isnt a real proposal. Its not even feasible. At best this is a "vision"...and a pretty garish one at that.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I saw how tall it was going to be. I fear this project will face the same amount of problems as the spire.

Both the spire and this proposal are awesome and I wish they would both come to fruition somehow. It would be nice to shock the world every once in a while.

Isn't it something that is actually being proposed? At least a rough outline?

I'm not a huge fan of Water Tower Place or PT, but WT is one of the more successful parts of Michigan Avenue today. And when PT was developed, opening itself to the streets would not have been viable (or even particularly safe). And now that the environment has changed, PT is changing. The environment that currently exists in that area would not support a smaller-scale, outwardly-focused retail. There is not only a lack of foot traffic, but there is a lack of the possibility of foot traffic in large chunks of it. Are you seriously proposing turning an expressway (which is what Congress turns into as it passes under the Post Office) into some sort of promenade? And what of Canal at that point? It's not much better.

I suppose one solution would be to re-elevate Canal there and create a "normal" intersection with Congress. But they're both so wide there that it wouldn't be much more pedestrian-friendly. You talk about challenges as though any challenge just requires a little more thinking and it will magically disappear. That's not the case, and I think you're smart enough to know that.

Could Congress be narrowed and joined to a re-elevated, narrowed Canal there? Sure. But then you cut off an important feeder to the rest of the downtown area. I think the plan addresses some of the transportation connectedness issues better than you see it doing. It takes advantage of the dominate mode of transportation near it - the highway running under the property - while still leaving the north side of the building open to welcome pedestrians and those coming from the other modes.

As I mentioned before, I think it's naive to think there are very many options for Congress that wouldn't harm other parts of downtown. Taking advantage of the fact that Congress is there is not brushing it under the rug at all - it's simply using it for a purpose you seem to disapprove of (despite that being it's actual purpose for existance).

I'm not sure which line of restaurants you're referring to, but if they're along the river I'll point out that in the PDF I saw linked to, it showed a Riverwalk between the buildings and the River. If that's anything like Riverside Plaza and the other Riverwalk, it should provide access to any restaurants adjacent to it.

What downtown doesn't have is the kind of retail that appeals to suburban shoppers. Do you think Minneapolis would rather have all the tax revenues the Mall of America generates coming into their city, or do you think Minneapolis is thrilled that Bloomington gets that economy? Did the Twin Cities really need the Mall of America when it was built?

That is the scale of vision here. Whatever you think of the Mall of America, it is financially successful even in this economic environment because of its scale. It does have a lightrail link to downtown, and the first time I ever went there, in 1995, I took a bus there. But most people do drive there. Similarly, this megamall would also be most attractive to suburban-style shoppers - to drivers. That it is also accessible via transit is a bonus, but at the scale it's showing it seems likely that it would induce the vast majority of its customer base as new downtown visits and not steal it from the other downtown centers.

Even if it did steal some, it would certainly create more revenue for the city overall as it would be stealing far more revenue from the suburbs than from the City.

What the fuck is Booth Hansen's obsession with monotonous twin tower designs. I know it's just massing diagrams, but he could have chosen anything. Instead, he puts Joffrey/SoNo on steroids and has the result spend a nite with the successful 30 W Oak to produce this offspring. I know Mr. Booth is one of the respected elders of the architectural establishment, but apparently he needs to stay away from designing supertalls. Any developer laying out the super expense to build a supertall needs to maximize rent and not give up leaseable floor space to 30 feet of air and dual cores and blocked views, among other things, and the architect should know that. But none of this is for real anyway, like everyone is saying.

With that rant over, I was wondering if everybody noticed the sidebar in the Sun-Times article that listed the people involved in the project. It includes the principal of "Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects", which is curious. As an aside, I wonder if this Ritchie guy bought the remnants of the Johnson practice? I thought that it became Johnson-Burgee? If you're going to trade off the Philip Johnson name and his well-known '80s portfolio of signature towers, I dunno, just have a bit more professional looking public face.

Blair Kamin really shredded this guy...and to some extent Booth

Full article: LINK

My favorite pearls:

Also,

Full article

Among the most bizarre parts of this is the retail bridge over the river. How, exactly, will that lift to 140-foot clearance for the passage of boats? Or does the developer's self-importance extend to convincing the US Coast Guard to remove the South Branch from the list of navigable waterways?

Deep-pocketed developers with expansive reputations, backed by monster banks, failed to bring new tallests to fruition. Therefore, this one will actually get built.

Davies doesn't own that site...

Well, it seems like Chicago may continue it's rabbit ear style antenna tradition. I've wondered if this kind of design feature was a midwestern tradition for cities like Indianapolis's Chase and Minneapolis's IDS towers because of Chicago's JHC.
I may be wrong since the proposed tower's rendering is only conceptional which may never have them.

Agreed walk away nothing to see here.

Nashville too (they might be spires and not antennas, though). I don't think this is limited to a given geographic area.

It is an interesting question. Why 2, and not just 1, or 3 or 4? Though I think Beitler's Streeterville proposal from five or so years ago might have had 3. There is a nice aesthetic balance having a pair, and any more gets cluttered and ugly, so I'd say we're lucky to have this "tradition".

eww, just no, what a disgraceful excuse of a development.

Davies is just laying out a grandiose, futuristic possibility for this area, with the goal of boosting land values as much as possible. He's in it to flip the land, not to actually build anything. Consequently, the practical aspects of the plan don't matter.

He doesn't have the resources to build, anyway - he has no experience with large development projects and even less experience dealing with lenders or REITs. Even if he wanted to build, he'd have an incredibly hard time finding the money.

The pernicious spirit of speculation strikes again...

Went looking around and I found stuff you guys might like.

http://www.boothhansen.com/news/old-...lan-announced/

http://204.248.60.17/wp-content/uplo...ce-Program.pdf

http://204.248.60.17/wp-content/uplo...oth-Hansen.pdf

This seems like an accurate analysis.

I know someone in New York City like that. His name is James Joseph Sitt. He owns properties on Coney Island, but he tore everything down, and left only empty land without anything else.

This batch of massing concepts just seems like a really awful pr move. I understand it's great to get the public excited, but when they are laughing it's whole other story. Emerging from a recession where people are still humbled by our visible skyscraper losses and you throw this on the table.

The post office would benefit more from a wholesome well thought out plan that is convincing to the public. It's big, but not an impossible building to work with.

LOL, leave for two weeks and its 2007 again...


Just watch, this will be the 2000'er that finally gets built now that we are all pooh poohing it and convinced it will never happen.

I definitely do not like the base/podium concept, but the twin 2000 footers don't look bad (given the rather crude rendering). It could be a LOT worse. I say build it.:yes:

...actually, the only way the 2000 foot tower(s) could possibly get built is if they eliminate the huge, ill-conceived base "contraption" completely. The city simply wouldn't allow it (nor should it).

http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5565

Mail Mall Monolith
Developer proposes tallest Chicago tower in Post Office makeover.

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/ima..._office_02.jpg

Alan G. Brake
8.02.2011

I just realized these towers are just a bunch of Hyatt Centers stacked on top of each other and bound in pairs...

Yea, the design is awful. Really hoping these aren't the actual intended designs, it looks like a giant tuning fork.

At first I was okay with the design, but with a second look especially from the rendering above I really hate this building. Looks like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia had a child with the Sears Tower. Just no no.

At 120 stories, I'm guessing the roof height would be about 1650 ft with the antennas making up the difference to hit 2000 ft. I'm going to reserve judgment on the design until I see some more fleshed out renders.

:haha::lmao:

LOL they are.

I find the design similar to the long lost Twin Towers. It's not bad (the proposal) but it's not amazing either. I'd much rather have a little more bulkiness on the main building instead of all those other smaller towers.

I'm sure the design is just a conceptual stand in for a real design if there ever is one. As insane as this idea sounds, Booth actually makes it sound logical in the last article that was posted. And frankly, not to be optimistic, but maybe it could work. I mean Chicago doesn't have any massive malls like this downtown. Sometimes it's the most out of the box ideas that are successful. I'm sure the tower will never happen, but I could see a successful, scaled down, version of the plan eventually coming to fruition...

Well, I mean Chicago is gonna have to get a new supertall after 1 WTC takes tallest in the US title. If this is the one so be it, right now it's kind of a boring design, but I just hope a supertall gets built in Chicago over the next decade especially after the disappointing cancelling of the Chicago Spire.

What an absurd argument.

Why is it always a competition like that? I like both cities no matter who has the taller building. Tall buildings only do not a city make.

yeah that one was really out of left field. The PO has nothing to do with the highest of anything. If something worthwhile happens at this site it is just pure gravey.

Height????

I thought that it was quite clear nothing of this sort of height will be built at this location. Just fools gold...

Well no, but I'm just saying competition is a good thing. I don't care whether Chicago or NY has the tallest tower, they are both great skyscraper cities, I don't really care what the tallest tower is, height is hardly the most important thing about a building, but the 2,000ft number is not accidental, they are obviously aiming for the new tallest in Chicago and America and I'm just saying good for them, keep pushing the frontier. Whether that will actually happen or not is another issue. It most likely won't but when your starting point is 2,000 that means you have another motive rather than just build another skyscraper. The whole thing will likely be forgotten in a few months, but it's fun to speculate.

Not necessarily. If say the top 3 floors are all part of a movie cinema complex, or some other single use. Toronto's 10 Dundas Street East is about 9-10 floors of "retail" space, but the top 2-3 are just the vertically stack AMC theatres, and the bottom 2 floors are occupied only by Extreme Fitness.

I just briefly skimmed through this thread, but where does it say 6 million square feet of retail? That would make it by far the largest mall on the continent. Downtown Toronto's Eaton Centre is only 1.75 million square feet retail.

^^^ It would be larger than Mall of America and would rival the Asian mega malls...

Retail doesn't even make sense in this area because it's a fringe location. Any sort of retail would also be duplication of what is over on Michigan Ave and State Street.

Therefore, it would essentially be "shopping without the experience." Come over to this incredibly boring section of the city into this very large building. There are no attractions in that area except for Willis Tower which is not enough to influence people's decisions to spend time shopping over there.

This building should become offices or a casino with no additions at all.

Although having a casino sounds good, I believe it actually attracts cartels and casinos to operate illegally by laundering money which will then make the city more corrupt than it already is.

This is an absolute joke.

The police could be arrested him as charge of money laundering. Could be real problem with the money. I don't think happening to being built new taller tower.

I'm thinking the foundations will make a great ice rink one day. :haha:

Where is the cow...

I'm building a giant hollow one out of wood on wheels. I plan to donate it to New York as a tolken of our friendship... I'm definitely not filling it up with a large portion of the CPD or anything...

Has this just become a thread to post random thoughts and ideas or is there anything to actually talk about related to this project?

^^^ The cow is in an inside joke of sorts between Chicago fourmers.

the infamaous dusable park cow:

http://www.copley-wolff.com/graphics...s/dusable0.jpg
source: http://www.copley-wolff.com/graphics...s/dusable0.jpg