CHCAGO | Thompson Center redevelopment | Jahn's MASTERPIECE will be saved!!!!!!!!!!!

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by ardecila

There's no reason civic purposes can't coexist with commerce.

I have a vivid memory of a Black gospel choir performing in the Thompson Center for lunch crowds. Where else downtown would that ever happen?.

Civic isn’t the same as government. And an open plaza is not a secured government building. Posts in this thread say the Thompson center is for citizens to interact with their government. That’s not what’s happening when people watch a gospel choir.

And for activities, with or without a permit? That matters when talking about free speech, public access and the consent of retail.
Is the Thompson center a capital rotunda to petition elected officials, or is it an entertainment plaza? I submit that it can’t be both.

[thegoatman]

Can someone tell me what's so special about this building. The way people are reacting you would think this is the Hagia Sophia or something. I mean it's a piece of decent architecture, but nothing mind blowing. I don't walk past it and think "damn this is amazing".

They're literally just renovating it and adding more glass. Literally looks the same in the renderings.

Someone help me see the light.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by thegoatman

The way people are reacting you would think this is the Hagia Sophia Chicago's version of The Pantheon.

yes.

[ski_steve]

Glad this is being saved, too bad about losing the colored panels. I see this ultimately ending in one of two ways. 1- Torn down in ~20 years because it lost its historical significance. 2- Restored to original/current condition.

[the urban politician]

Glad that the State is going this route.

[Kngkyle]

Can someone fix the thread title? It's gone on long enough.....

[left of center]

Any way to add this thread to the Chicago Projects and Construction board? I keep forgetting about it because it isn't on my SSP "landing page"

[ardecila]

You're making a lot of assumptions in one post.
-IF office demand returns after Covid
-IF corporations will pay top dollar to be in the central Loop again after 2 decades of momentum pushing north or west
-IF corporations continue to value large floorplates
etc etc.

There's no reason to reject a viable plan for an albatross building because something bigger might come down the road sometime in the future if all the planets align. What are we supposed to do in the meantime, tear it down and live with an empty block for the next decade like Block 37 on a hunch? Sorry CTA riders, here are some rickety wooden staircases for you to use for the next decade. Sorry Pedway users, we just took out half the network. I promise, the sacrifice will be worth it when we have another 1000'+ building that you can look at from the planetarium!

The state literally threw open the door to any and all developers to submit proposals and only 2 serious proposals came out of it. I much prefer to trust the judgment of professional developers over this kind of wishful thinking. I haven't seen the details of Bob Dunn's proposal, we can debate the merits of that plan versus Reschke's but we can't debate a wild hypothetical.

[sentinel]

Wait, why is the selling price so low?

[gandalf612]

Originally Posted by sentinel

Wait, why is the selling price so low?

Because it's an incredibly difficult project to get right. Due to Jahn complete incompetence it will cost them $280 million just to fix his idiotic mistakes and make the building habitable. For reference, Trump Tower cost $850 million to build. So literally a third of the cost of a supernal to not gain any more leasable space. But tearing it down would also be incredibly complex and expensive because you'd have to buy out the master lease on the food court, AND keep the busiest, multilevel CTA station running during demolition and construction of whatever you'd want to build there.

[gandalf612]

Originally Posted by Toasty Joe

pretty sure he designed double glazing and other features to better withstand the elements/ test of time, the developer just cheaped out? but yeah this building never seemed to want to be the most practical.

The glazing I'll give you but pretty his original design still had an enclosed atrium which still would've required heating and cooling 12 floors worth (or however tall this PoS is) of air

[harryc]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

The glazing I'll give you but pretty his original design still had an enclosed atrium which still would've required heating and cooling 12 floors worth (or however tall this PoS is) of air

It's a trade off - a few PUBLIC places with this kind of spectacular space help balance the omnipresent profit driven design that most of us work and live in.

The atrium (pre-pandemic) always had something going on, city/state ceremonies and presentations were common, and the food court heavily used. This is where the dance people would do their stuff when the weather got too cold for the Daley plaza.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by harryc

It's a trade off - a few PUBLIC places with this kind of spectacular space help balance the omnipresent profit driven design that most of us work and live in.

The atrium (pre-pandemic) always had something going on, city/state ceremonies and presentations were common, and the food court heavily used. This is where the dance people would do their stuff when the weather got too cold for the Daley plaza.

And also plenty of protests and civic actions. When you talk about "the public square", this is the closest physical translation of that in Chicago. All races and ethnicities are welcomed, all political persuasions, anyone can come and speak their piece. These spaces are especially important when most Americans see the world through the lens of Facebook and Twitter. Real life physical spaces don't have fake news or clickbait.

Making the atrium open-air may reduce the operating costs of the building and improve warm-season comfort for the office workers, but it will remove the enclosure that makes the Thompson Center such an effective year-round gathering space for Chicagoans. Now the atrium will just be another frigid plaza like Daley Plaza or Federal Plaza, which are fine spaces but mostly lifeless in winter.

I hope at the very least that Jahn will do the microclimate analysis and energy modeling that's always been promised, so the atrium can remain cool and ventilated in warmer months, otherwise it could be an unpleasant space year-round. All those plants will just increase humidity so good passive ventilation is key.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

Because it's an incredibly difficult project to get right. Due to Jahn complete incompetence it will cost them $280 million just to fix his idiotic mistakes and make the building habitable.

I'm trying to figure out what this means. . . can you please elaborate on what Jahn did that was incompetent?

. . .

[r18tdi]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I'm trying to figure out what this means. . . can you please elaborate on what Jahn did that was incompetent?

Don't feed the troll...

[gandalf612]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I'm trying to figure out what this means. . . can you please elaborate on what Jahn did that was incompetent?

. . .

Personally I consider designing a public building that's horribly inefficient and completely unsustainable incompetent. Feel free to disagree lmao

[Tombstoner]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

Personally I consider designing a public building that's horribly inefficient and completely unsustainable incompetent. Feel free to disagree lmao

As Via Chicago suggests, most would argue that he did not design a building that was inefficient or unsustainable; the unsustainable inefficiencies came in when the builder chose to use single-pane glass rather than the double-paned insulated glass Jahn intended.

[Mr Downtown]

Some of you are new around here, so here’s my periodic reminder to fanboys that skyscrapers have to make economic sense. In the US, we don’t build them to stroke potentates’ egos. We build them to make the maximum profit for investors, many of whom are real go-for-broke wild-eyed gamblers like New York Life Insurance and California Public Employees Retirement System.

There’s an obvious tradeoff between height and elevatoring requirements. The higher you go, the more elevators you need—and the more floorplate they occupy. A supertall on a 6000-sq-ft building site will give you four corner offices on each floor and not much more. But you'll have to ask $80/ft because the building was so damned expensive to build and run.

Less obvious are two other tradeoffs: cost of construction (taller buildings require specialized concrete and other things) and time to occupancy. A developer doesn’t want a construction loan hanging over them for several years; they want to get a couple of big anchor tenants signed, build a building, and have them paying rent within two years. Though you can get an occupancy permit for part of the building while construction continues above, there are limits.

The “sweet spot” for all these factors coming together for maximum profitability is roughly 50 floors for office buildings in downtown Chicago, and around 35-40 floors for residential. Manhattan can go taller, at least for residential, because of more rich people but mostly because of overseas investor-owners who may never visit the site but see condos there as a no-lose place to park their money. Chicago doesn't enjoy that reputation.

[F1 Tommy]

Pritzker continues to surprise me, this is a great save . He has done alot to help Illinois even if I don't like the guys politics. Better than the last one for sure.

[DePaul Bunyan]

This is unfortunate and a wasted opportunity. The site is the most transit-friendly in the city and is begging for a supertall. Plus the state has counted the sale of the property towards the budget for the last couple of years. Buildings are meant for people to live and work, not admired by urbanists and architecture hipsters. It should have never been built and the state should have gotten out from under this albatross a long time ago. Now they're going to get roped into contributing towards the redevelopment of a flawed design. Illinois is bordering on insolvency. Vanity projects won't help.