Never understood why the highest floors of the carbide and carbon building weren't used. At one time, they kept the elevators unlocked to the top floors for years. You could just take them to the very top and have sweeping views of downtown and open the windows to take photos. The floors had no wall partitions except at the core and had elevators and normal exit stairs all the way to the top. So it wasn't like a code issue preventing their use.

March 15







March 18

The Holiday Inn lounge is the best chance the average person will get for a view of the junction in the river, now that it is has been closed off with office and residential. Am hoping it doesn't go anywhere

This is awesome content from the developers of Salesforce Tower:

• Video Link

That core is absolutely massive.

It'll be a Nice looking building....but at 825 feet it won't make any impact on the skyline.

that's simply untrue, particularly from certain angles, namely looking southeast from the northwest. I am thinking in particular of chris08876's stunning panorama of the skyline--Salesforce Tower will undoubtedly make itself seen from that perspective.

perhaps it won't make a particularly dramatic impact on the skyline, but other towers of comparable height (Water Tower Place, Chase, 300 N Lasalle, BMO) are clearly visible and contribute to Chicago's urban landscape.

It'll be a Nice looking building....but at 825 feet it won't make any impact on the skyline.

Agreed I liked it when it 1,000ft or when it was proposed at 900ft

It will be a stub, but a shiny stub!

Is it somewhat unusual that so much of the core is built ahead of the floors?

Not really. 333 N Green had the same thing going on. To a lesser extent, BMO Tower, too. This thing looks like it will have the core top out before the steel is halfway up.

This one is going to have two perspectives. It will dominate the views from the river, both the main and south branches.

From the skyline perspective, it will be just another part of the plateau around the convergence of the river. In that sense.

I'm less bummed about that because of Vista, Tribune Tower, and others that are going to be that tent pole in the center of the skyline from most angles. Obviously, I wanted this to be a supertall, but it's not a huge deal to me. This is an A or A- development in my opinion. It'll age gracefully, too, since it doesn't have any obviously weird design elements.

I know I've mentioned this before, but there have only ever been two pure office towers ever built in chicago with occupiable office space above 900', sears and aon, and both of those were built a half-century ago by corporations sparing no expense to build grand edifices to themselves.

800 - 900', is about the maximum height of office tower that chicago's land prices reasonably justify. So when the hotel component got axed from this tower, it was no surprise that it ended up right in that same range.

Now, like 2pru or franklin center, they could've stuck a pole or other decorative embellishment on top (as we saw in some of the earlier renderings) to reach for an officially higher height figure, but that would've likely still had little impact from a skyline perspective, unless it was something more substantial like 311 s wacker's over the top crown.

Should be pretty prominent from the SB Kennedy. And the river canyon of course.

So are we expecting glass this month?

Probably not. Only about an hour and a half left now. :shrug:

The ratio of core to “usable” floor area seems rather high. Is this a consequence of a constrained lot?

Yup, now imagine if this had another 15 floors and required yet another bank of elevators. That's why this isn't a supertall...

Wouldn't a sky lobby solve that problem?