CHICAGO | General Developments - Page 1389

aaron38 · #**27761** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 12:35 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

What the fuck does bus traffic have to do with whether or not residential should be built there?

Because there will be the same idiots as the ones who move into Wrigleyville and say "whadda mean there's a ballpark here? And they play night games? And fans walk through my quiet residential street? Outrage!"

It's entirely predictable and I think the city will function better if we try and keep residential, office and industrial separate. Put an office building next to the bus terminal.

ardecila · #**27762** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 1:21 AM**

This all seems very overblown... sure the bus terminal is busy, but it's not that noisy. I don't think the Greyhound buses have backup alarms, so the worst thing you'd hear is idling. Hundreds of people already live in townhouses and condos on the other side of that confluence and apparently do just fine.

I mean, we aren't talking about rickety wood-frame apartments next to the L here. I doubt the sounds from the bus depot would even be audible inside a newly-constructed and insulated building.

paytonc · #**27763** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 3:51 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

Bruce Graham is spinning in his grave.

Four *different* glass appendages in various sizes and shapes, and even more commercial uses encroaching onto the plaza? The public paid for that privately owned public space by giving the building a tremendous zoning bonus; it has over twice the FAR than would be typically allowed on the site.

The 1993 redesign reshaped the plaza from a rectangle to a semicircle, and in doing so enclosed a third of the plaza for retail space and filled much of the remainder with outdoor dining. Now another third could be enclosed, and not even for a public use?

(BTW, the 1993 Trib article about the redesign is kind of fun -- same problems then, with people never really knowing which entrance to use. One of the perils of having such a wonderfully mixed-use building.)

aaron38 · #**27764** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 4:07 AM**

NIMBYs don't just complain about noise. But about traffic, congestion, crowds. Hell I have a neighbor who told me during my sons 1st birthday party that our guests weren't allowed to park on HIS street. I don't talk to him anymore.
Most people suck, the further you are from homes, the more freedom you have.

wierdaaron · #**27765** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 4:58 AM**

What buildings do multiple entrances right? I can think of a lot of buildings I've walked around the base of, scratching my head. Trump, Hancock, Willis. Their separate entrances are on different sides of the building, but there's never any way of knowing which entrance to use other than walking up to a door and getting it wrong a few times.

Hancock has a lot of potential that I think is being wasted on multiple fronts, including the name. I've mentioned not understanding the name here before, but since the rename story hit the press I've asked many friends who live elsewhere if they know what the John Hancock Center in Chicago is and they didn't. Two asked if it was a concert hall. The plaza, too, is a waste of prime mag mile foot traffic full of people who want to shop and do touristy Chicago stuff, and the updated design does nothing to remedy that. For being one of the defining features of the skyline, I don't think the building takes advantage of its strengths.

LouisVanDerWright · #**27766** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 7:46 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila

^ but that's the weird thing. I don't think there is anybody out there right now with a cringe-inducing office proposal. All of the legitimate competitors have top-notch, talented architects on their team - Goettsch, Krueck+Sexton, Pickard Chilton, John Ronan, Cesar Pelli. I wouldn't necessarily give Hines the edge over O'Donnell on design.

Residential is where we see the local hacks come out to play, partly because there is and will always be a segment of the market demanding "traditional" design and there are precious few firms on a national level who do that (AM Stern being one).

What I am saying is that smaller shops tend to do it better than bigger institutional players because they aren't just a bunch of drones crunching mindless numbers like at Buck or Hines. O'Donnell has the freedom to pursue a more radical development and it is paying big dividends for him. Most people who do institutional development look at a proforma and say $X invested in this results in $Y of additional value. They never look at what $X is. they just say, "well we spent $25 million on a lobby revamp, the building should gain $50 million in value as a result"

Obviously I'm oversimplifying it, but the point is that big instituitonal investors are often completely blind to any sort of planning or aesthetics. They just figure an investment has the same effect whether it is Antonvich or Foster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila

No he's talking about the lateral bracing at the top of the arch. Very inelegant.

Agreed, however the last picture posted here exaggerates the awkwardness of it. It looks very natural from the obtuse orientation, but very awkward from the acute.

harryc · #**27767** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 1:45 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by wierdaaron

What buildings do multiple entrances right? I can think of a lot of buildings I've walked around the base of, scratching my head. Trump, Hancock, Willis. Their separate entrances are on different sides of the building, but there's never any way of knowing which entrance to use other than walking up to a door and getting it wrong a few times.

Hancock has a lot of potential that I think is being wasted on multiple fronts, including the name. I've mentioned not understanding the name here before, but since the rename story hit the press I've asked many friends who live elsewhere if they know what the John Hancock Center in Chicago is and they didn't. Two asked if it was a concert hall. The plaza, too, is a waste of prime mag mile foot traffic full of people who want to shop and do touristy Chicago stuff, and the updated design does nothing to remedy that. For being one of the defining features of the skyline, I don't think the building takes advantage of its strengths.

ABA (Formerly Quaker)

Lobby is split up between Bake for Me - ABA space, and now CRE space. you can get to any of it from either set of doors.

IBM (no I won't call it AMA)

pilsenarch · #**27768** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 2:03 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Agreed, however the last picture posted here exaggerates the awkwardness of it. It looks very natural from the obtuse orientation, but very awkward from the acute.

It appears to me that this is the unfortunate result of VE'ing again... all of the lateral support between the arches appears to be offset (from one side of the arch in the middle to the other side) for what I can only imagine to be for constructability and cost reasons...

ardecila · #**27769** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 3:04 PM**

LVDW - still not sure what you're getting at. River Point and 150 N Riverside are about as apples-to-apples as two large developments can get. Both have dramatic modern designs built over railroad tracks with public plazas and riverwalks. Similar amounts of leasable SF with similar parking and retail//restaurant components.

The biggest difference is that Hines demanded $30M of TIF money for their plaza while O'Donnell found a way to build it himself. He should be commended for that, but I'm not seeing how that makes his project more "radical".

PKDickman · #**27770** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 3:31 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilsenarch

It appears to me that this is the unfortunate result of VE'ing again... all of the lateral support between the arches appears to be offset (from one side of the arch in the middle to the other side) for what I can only imagine to be for constructability and cost reasons...

Truth of the matter is that the supports are symmetrical. The central cross bracing connects the highest points on all three arches. and the diagonal bracings are are the same on both sides.

Between the skew of the bridge and foreshortening, it is almost impossible to resolve this from the ground. It probably makes more sense from the trail level.

Doubling the diagonal braces to a pair of Xs might have made this more intuitive, but maybe not.

LouisVanDerWright · #**27771** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 3:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila

LVDW - still not sure what you're getting at. River Point and 150 N Riverside are about as apples-to-apples as two large developments can get. Both have dramatic modern designs built over railroad tracks with public plazas and riverwalks. Similar amounts of leasable SF with similar parking and retail//restaurant components.

The biggest difference is that Hines demanded $30M of TIF money for their plaza while O'Donnell found a way to build it himself. He should be commended for that, but I'm not seeing how that makes his project more "radical".

I'm talking about the design, O'Donnell was ever so slightly more aggressive with the architecture and that's part of why he is wailing on them. River Point is not particularly exciting, nice design, but certainly not adventurous. Riverside has not only the ridiculous cantilever base, but all manner of setbacks and balconies. Most institutional developers would look at outdoor space, particularly on higher floors of an office building, as wasted floor space that could be leased, but O'Donnell get's it. The outdoor space makes those upper floors irresistible for the loaded, image conscious, wealth management type or privately held firms that's he has already stated to land.

My point is that if all you do is look at proformas all day, you are just going to build glass boxes with no real character or do "improvements" for the sake of doing improvements (as is likely the case at the Hancock). Why? Because these people only understand numbers, they don't understand design or how human psychology has set patterns of reaction and interaction to the spaces in which we live and work. That's exactly what is behind the Hancock nonsense which is what I was originally responding to. These changes are proposed because the owners only look at spreadsheets and go "we are spending $X on "improvements" so we will see $Y appreciation in value".

Some of it is site constraints over at River Point and Riverside, but it's no accident that O'Donnell has found a way to shoehorn a better building into a more difficult site. He is independent, it's only mostly about the spreadsheet for him, not all about it. It's also why he is disrupting the John Buck / Hines office building circlejerk here in Chicago. The fact that they are apples and apples is exactly my point. Two seemingly identical formulas, one slightly more thought out design, wildly different leasing results DESPITE the incumbent advantage of a massive corporation like Hines who has done this hundreds of times.

bcp · #**27772** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 4:16 PM**

that bridge is bad...it's neither symmetrical or abstract...it juts looks like somebody dropped it on its head.

rlw777 · #**27773** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 5:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

I'm talking about the design, O'Donnell was ever so slightly more aggressive with the architecture and that's part of why he is wailing on them. River Point is not particularly exciting, nice design, but certainly not adventurous. Riverside has not only the ridiculous cantilever base, but all manner of setbacks and balconies. Most institutional developers would look at outdoor space, particularly on higher floors of an office building, as wasted floor space that could be leased, but O'Donnell get's it. The outdoor space makes those upper floors irresistible for the loaded, image conscious, wealth management type or privately held firms that's he has already stated to land.

My point is that if all you do is look at proformas all day, you are just going to build glass boxes with no real character or do "improvements" for the sake of doing improvements (as is likely the case at the Hancock). Why? Because these people only understand numbers, they don't understand design or how human psychology has set patterns of reaction and interaction to the spaces in which we live and work. That's exactly what is behind the Hancock nonsense which is what I was originally responding to. These changes are proposed because the owners only look at spreadsheets and go "we are spending $X on "improvements" so we will see $Y appreciation in value".

Some of it is site constraints over at River Point and Riverside, but it's no accident that O'Donnell has found a way to shoehorn a better building into a more difficult site. He is independent, it's only mostly about the spreadsheet for him, not all about it. It's also why he is disrupting the John Buck / Hines office building circlejerk here in Chicago. The fact that they are apples and apples is exactly my point. Two seemingly identical formulas, one slightly more thought out design, wildly different leasing results DESPITE the incumbent advantage of a massive corporation like Hines who has done this hundreds of times.

I think you're giving way too much weight to the architectural role in sales. A lot of other information is needed before coming to the conclusion that one building is leasing more because of the design. I also think you're giving 150 more praise than it's due. I thought it was good the first time when it was UBS tower... And the second time when it was 155 n Wacker.

pilsenarch · #**27774** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 5:33 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by PKDickman

Truth of the matter is that the supports are symmetrical. The central cross bracing connects the highest points on all three arches. and the diagonal bracings are are the same on both sides.

Between the skew of the bridge and foreshortening, it is almost impossible to resolve this from the ground. It probably makes more sense from the trail level.

Doubling the diagonal braces to a pair of Xs might have made this more intuitive, but maybe not.

Look closer, the 'truth' is they are NOT symmetrical... if they were, the perpendicular members, for example, would run continuously from the outer arches... (without the offset)

the urban politician · #**27775** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 6:23 PM**

Renders of the Clark and Chestnut townhomes are available

If they are going to go with this style, I was hoping that at least there would be some color/material variation between the homes

Tom Servo · #**27776** Posted **Mar 19, 2015, 7:16 PM**

You know, for a shitty faux-early 20th century design, these aren't that bad. But wasn't this potentially a cool looking tower?

In any event. Not bad, considering other (horrible) row house design in the area.