Sucks about the pedestrian bridge. Complete failure of leadership.
The rest of the proposal is fine, I guess. A lot depends on whether the neighborhood fills in with towers around it, or if this ends up as a weird unfinished multi-level complex. Illinois Center and Cityfront Center still have multiple vacant lots after 40 years. At least the public spaces around Bally's are extensive, but they still feel like an afterthought - they are talking up the porte-cochere area as a signature plaza, but they want to have the west side dominated by a blank parking garage. Slide 40 looks like the Design Committee asked them to look into doing liner hotel units, and they are saying it's too hard.
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Originally Posted by twister244
Wow - Thanks for posting that.....
The more details I see of this development, the more I fall in love with it. Super happy the city chose this. The attention to detail on the riverwalk (so far at least) looks amazing. Those massing renders make this project look even grander.
On the transit side, I'm pretty happy too. Yeah, it's going to suck for people driving into the area, but the Grand Ave Blue Line stop really is pretty damn close. Not sure what the "transit center" in the details would be here..... A simple bus stop?
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Well, the North Branch Transitway will be either a busway or a streetcar line - if it gets built at all. Most people assume it will be a busway, because it's cheaper to build and so that buses can extend beyond the ends of the corridor at Cortland Ave and Kinzie St, maybe to Blue or Red Line stations or Metra. If it is a busway, then the transit station will just be a pair of underground bus platforms like
this one in Boston.
The location of the station is odd though - I think CTA would rather have it closer to the Chicago/Halsted intersection to allow transfers, rather than in the middle of the development. I guess there's no reason they can't do both, but it's not really rapid transit if it's stopping every 2 blocks.