Quote:
Originally Posted by SIGSEGV
You're not wrong, but obsolete historic office buildings don't have many good choices. And the east loop is not particularly easy to get to from the suburbs except from the South and Indiana.
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Plus these historic office buildings have botched commercial renovations, and awful drop ceilings with bulkheads covering up a third of the windows. Modernizing them to current office tastes with high ceilings and open floorplans requires an insane amount of mechanical alterations. Some buildings have beautiful original inter-communicating stairs of stone and marble just walled off because some small firm that moved in didn’t need it or was a code issue. A conversion to hotel or residential is the only way these buildings will be restored to their original grandeur
I remember when it was thought the London guarantee building couldn’t be renovated into a hotel. It lacked continuous exit stairs and was reliant on exterior fire escapes. The floorplans were non-conducive to anything but office. Well they made it happen and now it’s probably one of the best hotels to stay at in downtown Chicago.