Boooo is right. Come on! :(

Ugh. What a bait and switch. Yet another example of how the private sector has lost all sense of civic duty.

From Trib Article: "Van Schaack [a Senior MD at Hines] declined to comment on Salesforce. Hines has zoning to build as high as 950 feet, but he said the planned 1.3 million-square-foot office tower is likely to be about 800 feet — or about 60 stories — tall. Previous reports of the Wolf Point office building potentially including a large exterior video board were incorrect, Van Schaack said."

Re: height only, not encouraging for 800+ ft coming from a Senior MD. Maybe that's roof height and not including some form of spire/other enhancement....C'mon Hines!!!

http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/imag...erscrossed.gif

^What he hell is that about?...this building was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the three...the Kennedy family wanted something special built for the city and this was going to be the exclamation point...i get annoyed how Chicago can fudge up prime sites with underwhelming results (architecturally speaking) .. we play it way to safe in this city recently.. .:(

With a developer as massive as Hines it's surprising they don't go the course of sign the anchor tenant, build a gem (950'+), market the rest of the tower until it fills.

They must not have a lot of faith in our office market.

Right, 800 feet won't be that much higher than the current U/C tower to the east. The height is definitely a bummer but hopefully that's not including some sort of mechanical structure. We'll see. I think 850-ish would still be a nice addition to the area especially.

On the bright side the LSE tower is now 950+. I guess they sort of switched places. :shrug:

I guess not, if that's the case I'm not really surprised they downsized.

I don't know about that.

The chicago market simply doesn't appear to support offIce towers over 800' tall. For whatever reason, taller office towers don't seem to pencil out in this town. Chicago hasn't built an office tower over 800' in nearly 30 years.

It seems to be a rather hard ceiling these days, which is a damn shame because this spectacular site deserves a skyline standout. At 800' it will mostly be lost in the crowd. Way to aim low, hines.

I thought it was originally supposed to be mixed use though, which would be easier to fill than an office tower.

you get a 500k plus lease and you only have 60 stories and 800 ft?...this building must of been massively redesigned then since those floor to ceiling heights are nothing incredible for an office building...this building was fairly thin in the original design compared to the larger floor plates of other Chicago office buildings like 110 north wacker being built... which originally made me think this would be easily in the 900ft range even at 60 stories...similar to two prudential plaza... :shrug:

And I guess it's no longer mixed use? I thought there were condos and hotel too?
Maybe nixed by Reilly over "traffic" concerns....

Assuming its less expensive to build in Chicago than San Francisco, let's hypothetically hope SF has a clause to allow for further expansion assuming Chicago (based on their history here) is a place they'll continue expanding. Which could potentially help push the height upward?

I don't know..I'm grasping at straws here...800' is definitely crappy news

Eh I don’t buy the argument that the chicago office market can’t support 900+ footers. We’ve seen three 700+ footers in the last few years, and now a fourth. Surely one of those proposals could have snatched another tower’s anchor. Demand might be part of the problem, but just as troubling is the lack of long term investment on the part of the suppliers. The obsession with short term gain is pathological, as is the exaggerated risk aversion, with the result being extremely banal developments. I specifically remember the WP team saying “We’re in this for the long haul”. What a load of crap.

Welp... I guess the only solace is that this report is super early, and way before this tower will be breaking ground, so there is still a good chance this changes. If it is only 800 feet, I'll never vote Kennedy again :haha:

It's kinda funny and sad that the same week Site I (LSE) grew to 950 ft, WPS shrunk to ~800 ft

Perhaps they meant the office tower would be 800 ft, with the hotel/condo(?) portion towering above it. No one familiar with the matter has said it is no longer being marketed as mixed use...

After yesterday's comments, this is highly unlikely, but I'm an optimist!

If this is true the wording in the article would be strange and misleading.

Instead of saying "the office tower will be about 800 feet tall/60 stories", they likely would have said that the office portion would have taken up 60 stories of the building without giving a height estimate at all, since only the final building height really matters.

But yea, I always thought this was supposed to be mixed use?

Yeah I wouldn't put too much stock in the words of one person involved as quoted by the media. Most reporters know jack shit about construction and development and messing up things like height figures is a pasttime for them.

My biggest bit of evidence that they won't downsize it like that is simply that I don't know how they could possibly fit the remaining FAR they have available on only 60 floors while still staying within the guaranteed sight lines for Apparel Mart. It's not very often you see a developer leave buildable space on the table like that so I don't think they are going to sheer 10 or 15 floors off of this thing just to slightly increase efficiency when those floors are already approved.

Eh, I don't know. The guy they quoted, Greg Van Schaack, is the number two person on the midwest website so I doubt he'd be spouting off random numbers. It's shaping up to be a classic bait and switch. In retrospect, the downsizing of the east tower all makes sense now. It didn't at the time bc the rental market was so bullish. But if they're really giving us a measly 800 footer on the south lot, they couldn't have the east tower be nearly as tall.

Total BullShit!

Greg Hinz updated his piece a few hours ago...

"Update—A source close to the matter says that the video wall will not be a problem and says it now would be located inside and therefore not subject to the ordinance. If so, this deal appears well on the way to being done."