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View Poll Results: Which midwest city will build the region's next 700+ footer?
Minneapolis 66 40.49%
Detroit 33 20.25%
Cleveland 20 12.27%
Columbus 12 7.36%
Cincinnati 3 1.84%
Indianapolis 2 1.23%
Milwaukee 11 6.75%
St. Louis 2 1.23%
Kansas City 2 1.23%
Omaha 3 1.84%
Des Moines 1 0.61%
Another Midwest City 8 4.91%
Voters: 163. You may not vote on this poll

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  #221  
Old Posted Jul 30, 2021, 5:55 PM
DCReid DCReid is offline
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
^ bring it back to the Midwest, I think there's enough existing height and/or bulk in Minneapolis, Detroit and Cleveland to visually support a 1,000' tower, but it might be too big of a scale jump in most of the others. However, time can always cure that too.

Has anyone ever seen pictures of how ridiculously out of scale Chicago's John Hancock center was with the rest of the north Michigan avenue skyline when it was first built roughly a half century ago? But it's now a perfectly natural fit with all of the supporting 700+ foot towers around it that were subsequently built over the ensuing decades.
Hancock is a beautiful skyscraper, so I certainly don't mind that it dominated the north Michigan skyline. While I now like the still dominating Willis Tower, (Sears), when I first drove by it on I95 in mid-1980s with my uncle, he quipped that 'it is not easy on the eyes'.
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  #222  
Old Posted Jul 30, 2021, 7:05 PM
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Originally Posted by DanielG425 View Post
I know this is a skyscraper forum, but I love dense cities with height restrictions like this. Not San Diego-style height restrictions, but Madison/Washington D.C.-style height restrictions. It does so much more for the cityscape than any skyline could ever do. I'd take walkable over height any day, but I prefer a generous mix of the two. I'm in Houston though so all we have is height.
Although there is no height limit here in Chicago, the neighborhood of the West Loop is building up this way (mostly due to anti-height NIMBYs). . . mostly dense bulky sub-20 floor buildings with a few notable exceptions. . . it's really transformed that part of town in ways you're describing. . .

. . .
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  #223  
Old Posted Aug 1, 2021, 5:14 PM
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Originally Posted by DCReid View Post
While I now like the still dominating Willis Tower, (Sears), when I first drove by it on I95 in mid-1980s with my uncle, he quipped that 'it is not easy on the eyes'.
i think you meant I-94.

the sears tower is very tall, but i'm pretty sure you can't see it from I-95



but speaking of sears, it too was a very out of scale tower when it was first built as well:


source: https://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wor...anorama-1970s/


and to this day, its roof is still nearly 500' taller than any of its neighbors in that section of the skyline (sears @ 1,451' vs. 311 s wacker @ 961')
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  #224  
Old Posted Aug 1, 2021, 6:08 PM
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Originally Posted by DanielG425 View Post
I know this is a skyscraper forum, but I love dense cities with height restrictions like this. Not San Diego-style height restrictions, but Madison/Washington D.C.-style height restrictions. It does so much more for the cityscape than any skyline could ever do. I'd take walkable over height any day, but I prefer a generous mix of the two. I'm in Houston though so all we have is height.

Skyscraper with a low-rise and mid-rise podium can give the best of both worlds. I am not sure that limiting height improves the cityscape or walkability.
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  #225  
Old Posted Aug 1, 2021, 8:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
That image is a stark reminder that most cities 50 years ago had very few skyscrapers. With today's lens applied, Chicago looks like a so-so skyscraper city there, especially if you remove the Sears tower.
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  #226  
Old Posted Aug 1, 2021, 9:58 PM
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That image is a stark reminder that most cities 50 years ago had very few skyscrapers.
I think the gargantuan scale of the sears tower is throwing off your perceptions.

When that picture was taken in the mid '70s, Chicago had 34 buildings over 500 ft. Which at the time was far and away the 2nd largest collection of such towers on the planet after NYC (105).

Even today, 34 buildings over 500 ft. would still be more 500 footers than all but a small handful of US cities have now (NYC, Miami, and Houston)
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  #227  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 3:09 AM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
I think the gargantuan scale of the sears tower is throwing off your perceptions.

When that picture was taken in the mid '70s, Chicago had 34 buildings over 500 ft. Which at the time was far and away the 2nd largest collection of such towers on the planet after NYC (105).

Even today, 34 buildings over 500 ft. would still be more 500 footers than all but a small handful of US cities have now (NYC, Miami, and Houston)
Plus LA, if you count the 500+ ft. towers under construction that have already topped off.

Chicago had a lot of skyscrapers for a city at the time that photo was taken. It's our inflated perceptions of height today that make it seem less impressive in hindsight to us than it was to people back in the day.
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  #228  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 3:43 AM
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Plus LA, if you count the 500+ ft. towers under construction that have already topped off.
I was just going off of the CTBUH database, which lists 33 towers over 500' for LA, including U/C towers.

But no database is infallible, and either way, it's pretty damn close, so......



The larger point, as you duly noted, is that Chicago had a crapload of skyscrapers back in the 70s.
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  #229  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 3:52 AM
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That slopey Chase building (near Lake?) is huge in its own right and would dominate just about any other skyline today as someone above previously mentioned.

And yes, you can see the Sears from I-95
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  #230  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 3:54 AM
Buckeye Native 001 Buckeye Native 001 is offline
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Completely off-topic and I don't even know what the gameday experience was like before, but man I hate what Soldier Field looks like nowadays, even almost 20 years after the renovations.
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  #231  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 3:58 AM
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Completely off-topic and I don't even know what the gameday experience was like before, but man I hate what Soldier Field looks like nowadays, even almost 20 years after the renovations.
Old soldier field was a pretty terrible place to watch a football game (the seating pitch was way too effing shallow).

The new stadium does look like a UFO landed on top of the old stadium, but it's billions of times better from a spectator perspective.
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  #232  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 4:02 AM
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Yeah, I figured the old one was probably a shitty gameday experience. Hell, you can see in that photo that it was way too big for NFL football and had makeshift stands in the north end zone?

My dislike is a completely subjective aesthetic issue. The asymmetry is what throws me.
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  #233  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 4:15 AM
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I always forget that Soldier Field is right across the street from the Field Museum. I'm never there when there's a game.
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  #234  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 4:19 AM
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
and would dominate just about any other skyline today
at 869' tall, Chicago's Chase Plaza (built in 1969) would today be:

- 30th tallest in NYC

- 12th tallest in chicago

- 4th tallest in Philly
- 4th tallest in Houston
- 3rd tallest in LA
- 2nd tallest in San Francisco
- 2nd tallest in Atlanta
- 2nd tallest in Seattle
- 2nd tallest in Cleveland
- 2nd tallest in Dallas
- 2nd tallest in Charlotte

- 1st tallest in all other US cities
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Aug 2, 2021 at 4:38 AM.
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  #235  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 1:04 PM
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I always forget that Soldier Field is right across the street from the Field Museum. I'm never there when there's a game.
If you go to the Field Museum, you park in the Soldier Field lot. The main entrance literally faces Soldier Field and the parking.

I think when they renovated Soldier Field they added that massive garage, which serves all the other lakefront stuff during non-football days. Not sure what people do during fall Sundays.
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  #236  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 2:20 PM
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Not sure what people do during fall Sundays.
most people seem to know to stay away from the museum campus on football sundays.

or if you're hellbent on going, go early or just take transit.

if you can do transit, it's probably not a bad time to visit the museums as they likely see some of their lightest weekend crowds of the year on those days.
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  #237  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 2:26 PM
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Skyscraper with a low-rise and mid-rise podium can give the best of both worlds. I am not sure that limiting height improves the cityscape or walkability.
I don't think it does. I think having a good mix of office, residential, entertainment and retail, including grocery/restaurants is key to improving cityscape/walkability. I also think having good transit and streets that are pedestrian friendly. Otherwise, you have a bunch office buildings that are busy during the day but deserted in the evening/weekends. Likewise, you can have bunch of apartments/condos that require people to drive to get to stores or where people are unlikely to walk or bike because of the huge amount of auto traffic. While older cities have the tighter cityscape grid and buildings that can easily accommodate the mix to encourage walkability, newer cities can sometimes get it right.
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  #238  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 6:33 PM
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If you go to the Field Museum, you park in the Soldier Field lot. The main entrance literally faces Soldier Field and the parking.
Sure but there's a lot of greenery separating the two and SF does a good job of blending into the background you almost forget it's there. Unlike most stadiums where its a huge monolith surrounded by a sea of concrete parking.
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  #239  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2021, 8:25 PM
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Originally Posted by DCReid View Post
I don't think it does. I think having a good mix of office, residential, entertainment and retail, including grocery/restaurants is key to improving cityscape/walkability. I also think having good transit and streets that are pedestrian friendly. Otherwise, you have a bunch office buildings that are busy during the day but deserted in the evening/weekends. Likewise, you can have bunch of apartments/condos that require people to drive to get to stores or where people are unlikely to walk or bike because of the huge amount of auto traffic. While older cities have the tighter cityscape grid and buildings that can easily accommodate the mix to encourage walkability, newer cities can sometimes get it right.
The problem with office buildings is how much parking space they require around them. That's why downtowns that are devoid of public transit like Oklahoma City are full of parking lots and garages, and all those office buildings are isolated, not mixed well with residential, retail, and all those other uses. To fill in those gaps in the cityscape, and mix all those uses together, it means reducing the demand for parking, and that means investing in public transit. Ultimately, the amount of public transit will determine the density and walkability of a city much more than any height limits or lack thereof will.
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  #240  
Old Posted May 18, 2022, 1:35 PM
MPLS_Const_Watch MPLS_Const_Watch is offline
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Well, this proposal is out. At 31 floors, 440' the activity it will bring will be great and it will add some density to the mid tier of the skyline from the south, but it will be continuing our recent trend of buildings in the 300-500' range and drought of true skyscrapers.

FWIW, I did start a thread for this now that we have the basics of a proposal-- https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=251169
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