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Originally Posted by 10023
^ Speaking of, when will we start seeing some real office development in the West Loop (between the river and I-94)? I don’t just mean things like the (former) ABN Amro building, but real towers. There are plenty of parking lots and plenty of re-developable properties (like that hideous social security administration building).
There’s also plenty that must be preserved, like red brick warehouses or those Italianate former rowhouses on Jefferson between Randolph and the L, so hopefully protection is in place for this stuff before the development comes.
Separately, it would be cool to see Presidential Towers go through a redesign at ground level to better interact with the neighborhood, now that they’re not in the middle of nowhere.
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It's a weird zone of desirability, not prestigious enough for marquee office towers compared to riverside or Wacker Drive sites, but too close to the CBD and too business-like for a real residential boom.
So, we get a slow trickle of the so-called "econoboxes" that aim for cost-conscious corporations who don't want to pay top-dollar rents, and a slow trickle of residential towers from people who want to be close to work but don't demand a bunch of amenities right outside the door.
Still, it's much much better than it used to be. There are multiple buildings that you can't see from Google Maps aerials yet. Virtually no open lots left on Clinton, Jefferson is starting to feel enclosed, and only Des Plaines is still a parking lot wasteland. I can probably count on one hand the number of large developable sites (parking lots) remaining. The bigger problem is how to encourage more development on the various small parking lots scattered throughout. Condos often are a good fit for smaller sites, but this neighborhood is too noisy for condos, and rental apartment developers are all about scale, scale, scale right now so they can spread out the cost of amenities. Why bother with a bunch of hassles on a small project when you can do a project ten times bigger somewhere else for only twice the headache?