The height on this one was changed...

Making it not much higher than 900' would barely differentiate it from the height of this tower.

^One Chicago Square and the new Tribune Tower I believe as well.

This really isn’t applicable. We have of course seen buildingings get taller than initially proposed. The question here is with regard to buildings seeing an increase where there was already an explicit cap on the developments height.

I think Mr D has covered this more thoroughly in this thread before, but there is more than just a single lot zoning consideration here. Limit has to do with net density of the neighborhood. Generally speaking, the likelihood of it getting built taller is much less than what to normally hope for and certainly isn’t similar to the alleged ‘dozens’ of other examples.

My "dozens of examples" had to do with multiple things, most notably, the recent rezoning of multiple neighborhoods by Rahm in the last couple of years. I guess one could say that is not dozens and just a few fell swoop moves, but I thought of it as changing the heights of projects within multiple areas by proxy

That would still allow a ~950 foot building, that'd be pretty awesome. Provided there are not zoning changes which hopefully there could be.

This again is rather non specific.

I mean here is just a general bit from the city itself showing that anything can get changed with permissions: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/dept...mendments.html
There's an attached pdf to the page to show you what one must do to change zoning for a lot.

https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/7/27...nance-approved Here was when Lincoln Yards became a viable project

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...-fulton-market Same idea here, with no office size limits being put in. Prior, the limit was pretty harsh at 9,000 sqft. That being said, this zoning change had nothing to do with height. Still though, my main point was centered around major zoning changes being a thing since it was in response to "it can't be this big since it isn't zoned to be this big"

This was the general upzoning I was referring to from a couple years back: https://chicago.curbed.com/2016/4/15...od-zoning-plan

https://www.post-gazette.com/life/tr...s/200705180367

Here was when the Spire received the zoning change back so so long ago...

Anyway, this plus the recent zoning changes at LSE(https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/8/30...opment-meeting), and Wolf Point(https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleade...roved-it-twice) should suffice for my point.

From Loomis just north of Roosevelt:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Mg...=w1274-h955-no

Zoning changes happen all the time. I'd guess thousands happen every year in this city. You can see the list that gets voted on by city council and it's pretty long every month.

You may be thinking of a Planned Development which is a negotiated zoning change between developers and the city for larger/more important projects.

Once a PD is in place it's harder (but not impossible) to change zoning within it.

I'd guess this tower sits within a PD, but the lot next to it may or may not be included.

Here's the ordinace that outlines all details of this PD plus all (yes zoning changes) to it since it was created: https://gisapps.cityofchicago.org/gi..._pds/PD499.pdf

Thanks for adding in the more accurate language I was looking for. I am trying to find the comments from earlier in this thread that spelled this out, but search on this site is a bit limited. My recollection is that as far as the height limit is concerned it related to limits in the PD.

PD 499 covers this tower and the lot next to it, and most of (all?) of central station.


Like you say, not impossible to change but much harder. Enough so that you can't just hand wave the height limit away as something that typically changes.

Cool perspective SIGSEGV! Looks like the church steeple has some competition

County BBQ recently reopened so had to get head over to Taylor Street to get my brisket and pork puppies

Actually PDs are no harder to change. It's the exact same process actually, it's just that getting a PD in the first place is a lot more work because you are essentially writing a custom zoning code for that parcel. In the case of a height increase that's very simple for an existing PD. All you would have to do is file for an amendment to the existing PD which is a document that let's you make minor changes to the PD without much debate. As with anything else in Chicago, if the alderman supports it then it's a shoo in.

The best example of this process is the LSE PD which has already been amended countless times to change heights and shift density around since it was first enacted. Most notably the Vista site required an amendment to the PD which allowed a building up to 1200' with it's current configuration of hotel and residential units.

Changing the allowed height for the Michigan and Roosevelt site would be no harder than changing the PD was for Vista to allow a 1200' building instead of 850' or whatever the limit was before. In fact, it would be literally the exact same process except they would likely not be requesting any shifts in density or unit count since they are already planning max density on that corner and almost none on the town homes site just South on the east side of Indiana. From that perspective the process would be simpler than what was required to make Vista a possibility.

one other complicating factor is that the zoning or the pd or whatever this restriction is, is also based on the number of residential units within the district, not just building heights. so if there are 3000 allowable units and 2500 are built or are under construction, you can only build 500 units in the second tower (it's been over two years since I worked on the design for the second tower so I don't recall the exact numbers of units, so just making these numbers up.) obviously that affects building height also.

https://i.imgur.com/mE10jnE.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/qQ2rLtF.jpg

01/03/19

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...579556/enhance

^^A true Chicago beast^^One of its best views. Nice shot Bvic.

Excellent pic and is that the same type of grating they're going to use for Vista's blow through?

^^^ Vista's blow thru will be open, no grates or panels. Has to be in order to have the desired aerodynamic effects.

This tower is very Searsy, loving it. The grates themselves harken back to Sears hardcore.