[Alliance]

Blair Kamin really shredded this guy...and to some extent Booth

Plan for old post office complex: financial fantasy, architectural nightmare
BY BLAIR KAMIN July 22 201 07:45PM

Full article: LINK

My favorite pearls:

Originally Posted by Blair Kamin

"The design, still in the formative stages, is as mediocre as it is megalomaniacal. Its giant tower is no prize-winner and its visual damage would extend to ground level, particularly along the open-space corridor of the Chicago River."

Originally Posted by Blair Kamin

"This is a strangely suburban vision for a great American city, one that seems remarkably outdated as retailers abandon inward-turning malls in favor of street-facing shops. Even Presidential Towers, the West Loop complex whose mundane high-rises originally sat atop a mall-like podium, is reorienting its shops to the sidewalk."

Originally Posted by Blair Kamin

"The design offers a bizarre throwback to the post-riot days of the 1970s when cities were viewed as dangerous places and it was thought that the only way to draw people to them was to imitate the suburbs. It also represents a major flip-flop by Booth, who once proposed turning most of the old post office into a transit hub. “Expressways don’t make livable cities,” he proclaimed at the time."

Also,

Old Post Office developer didn’t make friends with past plans
BY DAVID ROEDER Business Reporter July 21, 2011 11:16PM

If Bill Davies is positioning himself as a prophet of urban development in Chicago, he is without honor in his former hometown.

Davies formerly lived in Liverpool, England. Press accounts from Liverpool said his relationships with local officials deteriorated when he held a couple of key properties for years and failed to improve them.

One was a proposed shopping complex called Chevasse Park that Davies owned for years until the local council pulled his legal title to the property. He also invested in, of all things, an old post office in central Liverpool, but it wasn’t redeveloped until he sold it after a nearly 20-year ownership.

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