I disagree (about the height that is), especially in that location.

But yea they look nice

Agreed 100% Wolf Point South, West, and East are all such missed opportunities. I'd rather wait for a new proposal. They are inoffensive, but kind of blahh. :(

I disagree 100%. WPW and WPE have been amazing. Design is not and issue here, and while we can complain that each tower didn't squeeze out another 100 feet, we can't act like the site could realistically hold a 1200 foot tower, and an office tower that big would have been impossible because any core for a tower that tall would leave minimal square footage, especially if the tower were made mixed-use.

I'll never have any issues with real towers being built over "potential" that never materializes.

This IIRC is the reason Hines didn't go taller for WPS.

Pretty sure a hypothetical 1000+ foot office/mixed-use tower would minimally need the entire space left on the site. The footprint for Salesforce tower San Francisco is like 200x200 (feet)

Yeah, with how much green space they wanted from the start, plus the fact the parking garage takes up about half the lot as is, it just wasn't feasible without an oddly shaped tower, or something far too expensive for Chicago real estate.

That lot in NYC? Yeah, we could be talking about 1200+, but this isn't Billionaire's Row.

Edit: Adding to this and all the height obsessed people here(and don't get me wrong, I love supertalls), but just take a stroll to the base of Chase tower during the week on a lunch break. Stand underneath it in its plaza. This tower will be roughly the same height as that beast. Chase tower is imposing, and this tower will be as imposing when viewed from riverboat tours or the river walk. 850 feet is big, and as far as my eyes can tell, the visual difference between 850 and 1450 of the Sears tower is pretty minimal at street level. There's a certain point where verticality stops matter in some weird optical illusion at street level. I don't know what the physics of it are, but I walk by the Sears tower basically every day and it really doesn't look like it's twice or three times as tall as the buildings around it.

From a skyline perspective, I get it, we aren't getting something that will add another spike to the skyline, but at the same time, the Western, Southern, and Northern views of the skyline wouldn't really have allowed this tower to show off much even if we go with a pipe-dream height of 1200 feet to the parapet. A 950 foot WPS compared to 850 would do almost nothing visually speaking, at least in my opinion and based off my experience of staring at towers every day of my life in real life and online.

Right, obviously angles distort size, and it's hard to tell how high a building is from the base sometimes. Walk a few blocks away, however, and the difference is quickly noticeable. Especially when the Sears Tower is structurally double that of an 850 foot building. It'll still have an awesome effect in that area of the river though.

In California I see the tallest buildings in LA and SF frequently, at just over 1000' they certainly are very tall but not quite overwhelming. I remember seeing Sears and the WTC and just being like holy sh*t.

I would argue that Chase looks taller than Sears from ground level. But i think a lot of that verticality comes from the tapering columns and sunken plaza. I agree with what you're saying though. Perception changes with perspective.

However I do think you are underestimating the impact this will have from the North and West in particular. Make no mistake, even at 800-850 feet this thing is going to be huge and there's nothing to the north or west if it that even approaches that height that could block it.

I can definitely see how it'll impact the North the more I think about it, but from the West, won't its bulk be absorb in peaks that are already in place? (Aon, Pru2, Trump, Vista, Aqua, River Point depending on where it's seen on the west)

Got my letter in the mail yesterday from the lawyers officially noticing the plan commission meeting on the 24th for this. Expected but shows everything is on track.

I can see what you're saying Bonobo but it all depends on perspective again. You gotta be pretty far west to see the Aon Center peaking over River Point/150. Like way out past Ashland, and Salesforce will be ~100' taller.
This shot from Green Line/Ashland is a couple years old now but this building will be every bit as tall as Trump from that distance and Aon isn't visible at all. Even Vista will be entirely blocked by River Point.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8705/...75fd47c2_c.jpg

Okay, that angle changes my mind... and hot damn, that's gonna be a giant blue shiny curtain wall from Wolf Point to the Bank of America Tower in 2022!

Whenever I think of the West I think of I-290, but that Green Line view is great

Since the crown is going to be dominated by blue cartoon-looking cloud I don't think we really need this thing to be another 100 feet.

What a boring, sterile image. Compare your "giant blue shiny curtain wall" to the buildings on the south side of Wacker between Clark and Franklin. This 2-and-a-half block stretch is way, way, way better than what you describe. They're not all great buildings but collectively they create a very nice look.

And they're not all old. The building on the southeast corner of Wacker and Franklin was built after 333 W Wacker but fits in well with its neighbors to the east.

Or the building between Wells and Franklin. The eastern two thirds of this building is old but the western third is an addition that was built, IIRC, in the 1980's. I like it a lot.

Do you mean East/West Wacker, because South Wacker doesn't have intersections with Franklin and Clark. Those two are N/S streets.

Anyway, agree to disagree, since we get those beautiful pink sunset reflections with them, and the blue wall will only take up 1/20th of the skyline, so it's not sterile by any means and it is always evolving. In 20 years, those buildings could be blocked by stuff in the West Loop for all we know.

Also I work right there in 333 W Wacker and see the buildings I think you are referring to every day. The buildings right next to it aren't that great to be honest. I'll take 700-800 foot well glazed towers over a mediocre PoMo and decent but short and rather bland old stock tower. Now the buildings East of Lasalle are very nice, I'll admit that, especially starting with the art deco tower.

^ Saying the south side of Wacker implies E/W Wacker.

I wouldn't call a mass of glass buildings sterile, but there is a very valid point there. A lot of the best skyline compositions have variety—height, style, form.

The worst part about the 'river north beige' that gets so many complaint here isn't so much the color or some of the individually bad buildings it is the mass of dull sameness. When seen from a wider angle so much of it just blends together into an indistinguishable mass.

The river confluence is seeing a lot of development all at the same time; the rather unfortunate consequence being a concentration of relative sameness.

I personally would never take "south side of wacker" to imply that, so I guess I must just be very literal with addresses.

Anyway, the city has a massive amount of architectural diversity, so like I had said already, there being an imposing blue glass wall that takes up 1/20th of the skyline isn't a big deal. Well, at least in my opinion, and as I had stated in my previous comment, it won't be that way forever since buildings always get built in front of other ones. Nothing is permanent in the skyline(other than the Sears tower dominating the Loop, but even that could change in 50 years for all we know.

I disagree about a ridge of glass like this hurting the skyline. I think the compositional layers of a skyline are greatly enhanced by clusters of buildings of the same style. A big ridge of 700-800' glass buildings doesn't dominate our skyline at all, but certainly adds a large, interesting feature to it. I've always loved the block of silver glass and stainless that was built in the last boom on the West side of Wacker in the last boom. This row will be no different and once all these improvements are in, you can bet at least one of the remaining developable lots in the area will end up being something larger and more interesting that will break through the plateau.

Side of a street has a pretty literal meaning, no?

What are we considering the last boom at this point? Are we talking pre recession? Genuinely not sure if you are talking about river point/150 or other buildings.

Either way, yes, with time all things change and depth will be added with new developments. Heck, it may even end up being ideal to have a flat backdrop of indistinguishable towers from ~Kinzie to Washington as the Fulton Market and the west loop fills out. In the near-term you have a large shiny beacon in the middle of the skyline that will pull your eye to it when viewed from the west.

That said, while I don't share the same apparent disappointment as the initial commenter, I do think the relative sameness ~6 towers in a small group is a little boring.

I do have concerns this will look too much like 110 n Wacker and BMO from the west

like a wall of blue glass

Future views from the west and from the north.

https://images2.imgbox.com/85/fa/Jx7VW3RW_o.jpg

https://images2.imgbox.com/83/d6/l24kN9m8_o.jpg

https://images2.imgbox.com/8f/70/Qqah46EU_o.jpg

https://images2.imgbox.com/25/91/r07ssB0o_o.jpg