By the way, that Geodesic dome is gone now. So much for it's being an "operations center" lol Guess, it was only for Amazon like we all thought.

Welp, lets hope something about it impressed them

6-25-18

http://i68.tinypic.com/2lnbak8.jpg

That looks like a small plane airport runway lol!

It looks like a giant '47 ballcap logo, to anyone who wears baseball caps. Maybe thats where the new chicago Lids flagship store is going. Lol.

Once The 78 is fully built out, South Loop will look dominant over the cityscape. Kinda like how Midtown and Lower Manhattan have their own distinct skylines.

I wouldn't look for any skyline-changers at The 78. There'll doubtless be some 40-story towers, but nothing tour guides will name. Related seems focused on what they describe as a sidescraper for a big corporate tenant, or split into sections among three or four. Something occupying a 400,000 sq ft site.

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5af48a87/t.../1450/1450x816

Groundscraper i believe is the term you're looking for but i do recall plans and proper zoning for a 900 footer!

:fireworks

^ Related is doubtless trying to replicate the success of Merchandise Mart in luring tech tenants to vast open floorplates, or various tech HQs in Silicon Valley.

Apparently tech employees are allergic to elevators, they'd rather ride a scooter down a 1200' long hallway :shrug:

To be fair, riding a scooter at a high speed through an office environment does sound like a lot more fun than being stuck in an elevator. :)

I am not the biggest fan of these proposed "groundscrapers", but as long as they are done right, with proper integration to the new street grid, easy access for pedestrians, and an engaging ground floor, I think they will do just fine.

Just don't make it a city version of the Allstate HQ in Northbrook.

I know comment is tongue in cheek, but I have literally ridden more scooters in small digital agencies in Chicago than I have seen inside the offices of Google or Apple in the valley. ;)

The valley is largely a wasteland of cookie cutter suburban office building campuses with corporate intra-building transportation solutions. Flexibility for growth seems like a pretty big preference.

http://www.j-carlson.com/ancilary/gbike.jpg

Why not "groundscapers" with high-rise residential on top? Elevators may suck for office cohesion, but they're great for commuting.

That looks awfully similar to SOM renders I saw for One Bangkok, a massive 16 million sqft TOD project in Bangkok. So most likely one project got used renders (timing wise I'd assume The 78).

But that also tells me this more the Urban Design / Master Planners still doing this. Which would probably mean other than the big "statement" landscapes, nothing will look like the renders once buildings start getting designed by investment/development partners and their anchor tenants.

^ Well, obviously. That's usually how it goes with this kind of master planning exercise. Same for Lincoln Yards. The developer expects the project to be completed over multiple economic cycles, so why pay the architects to develop detailed building designs before you need them? Especially if you expect the mix of uses to shift over time in response to changing markets? We haven't even seen reliable renderings of the Discovery Institute, and that's the most surefire part of the while 78 project right now.

The original plans for Cityfront Center, Central Station, and Lakeshore East all included significant office space, but with the exception of NBC Tower, all office space was eventually deleted by the developers when office tenants decided to prioritize Metra access over everything else, and killed the new-build office market for anything east of State. (It didn't help that the city's promises of a downtown circulator transit line kept getting canceled)

Riverline was unique in that Perkins/Will developed detailed designs for Ancora and a few other towers at the same time as master-planning the site.

^ Speaking of, when will we start seeing some real office development in the West Loop (between the river and I-94)? I don’t just mean things like the (former) ABN Amro building, but real towers. There are plenty of parking lots and plenty of re-developable properties (like that hideous social security administration building).

There’s also plenty that must be preserved, like red brick warehouses or those Italianate former rowhouses on Jefferson between Randolph and the L, so hopefully protection is in place for this stuff before the development comes.

Separately, it would be cool to see Presidential Towers go through a redesign at ground level to better interact with the neighborhood, now that they’re not in the middle of nowhere.

you really need to come back and visit more often.

these two 700+ footers were just completed last year:

https://cdn.skyrisecities.com/sites/...6453-92257.jpg
source: https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/...-opens-chicago

^^^ There's also as much space as is contained in those two office towers currently under construction in the Post Office which is also between the freeway and the river...

What a silly question anyhow, as if people build skyscrapers places because that's the aesthetically pleasing place to put them in the skyline. Here's a hint: they ain't building shit over by the freeway until all the super desirable sites that are along the river or right on top of the train station are filled up. Why? Because what tenant is going to be like "yes, I'd like to anchor this tower that's 3 blocks further from the train stations, not on the river, and much further from the loop and L because the skyline needs to see more office towers on these vacant lots"... No, they are going to go into the trophy tower with permanent river views every. single. time.

you can take the boy out of wisconsin, but you can't take the wisconsin out of the boy ;)

It's a weird zone of desirability, not prestigious enough for marquee office towers compared to riverside or Wacker Drive sites, but too close to the CBD and too business-like for a real residential boom.

So, we get a slow trickle of the so-called "econoboxes" that aim for cost-conscious corporations who don't want to pay top-dollar rents, and a slow trickle of residential towers from people who want to be close to work but don't demand a bunch of amenities right outside the door.

Still, it's much much better than it used to be. There are multiple buildings that you can't see from Google Maps aerials yet. Virtually no open lots left on Clinton, Jefferson is starting to feel enclosed, and only Des Plaines is still a parking lot wasteland. I can probably count on one hand the number of large developable sites (parking lots) remaining. The bigger problem is how to encourage more development on the various small parking lots scattered throughout. Condos often are a good fit for smaller sites, but this neighborhood is too noisy for condos, and rental apartment developers are all about scale, scale, scale right now so they can spread out the cost of amenities. Why bother with a bunch of hassles on a small project when you can do a project ten times bigger somewhere else for only twice the headache?

Wow, you really are out of touch. Here goes:

Already addressed by Steely above

Already preserved and incorporated into a highrise apartment building that probably has wrapped up construction

Already done years ago. Redesigned, and retail storefronts now largely facing the street