To be honest, I think the building is fugly. It might look a bit better when retail fronts are viewable..

On the other hand, The Viva Plaza (Amber Building) looks beautiful. If they can lock in a good restaurant or brew pub, it should be a great corner stone for the Ashland-Damen stretch of Chicago Ave. Beautiful buildings along that stretch of Chicago

What's with allowing condo/apartment buildings to be built on the corner of main streets with the front facing the side street and no retail? I drove by one on Chicago Ave and Elizabeth (south side) and also noticed one at Chicago and Noble (south side). Who allows this stuff?

Who knows, might even see some retail start to open at the lower level of Trump.

The FAA will be on high alert for airborne pigs.

I agree, it looked better before they built it. I am happy with the Amber Bldg as well. I used to go by and weep for the condition it had fallen into.

The others are the B2 scam.
B2 zoning allows residential uses on the first floor.
You get B2 and use the FAR bump, intended to accommodate the business, and use it for residential.

Chicago Ave and Grand ave have bizarre zoning. It is a shame.

Please god let it be true (well maybe minus tons of night clubs). I'm so sick and tired of 90% of the Loop being dead after 7pm. Extremely sad, but this could DEFINITELY happen with more visitors who want stuff to do around the places they stay in and not have to go a half mile north to find a bar that doesn't close before midnight on a Saturday (lame).

Actually they have pretty normal zoning.

The B2 thing is fairly new. 2004 code.
It is intended to be used to encourage residential development where there is too much business, or to deal with areas abandoned by business that have had their ground floors surreptitiously turned to apartments.

But it only seems to be used as a freebie for developers.

There will be another at Grand and Paulina. They got rezoned to B2-3 just last month

This is awesome news. I am also glad to see the little nugget of info on the neighboring 4500 sq foot lot: It was already sold off and will become another hotel.

I think the design would have been much more successful if the panels were narrower, matched the color of the underlying structure, and (maybe) were more thoughtfully arranged and there were no tint to the windows, but I'm still pleased with it.

Did the City wise up and drop the "606" name for the Bloomingdale Trail? David Roeder in the Sun-Times writes today that the construction contract was just awarded, and the proposed branding is mentioned nowhere in the article. More to the point, the underlying press release by the City has seven paragraphs and the name never appears, referring to it only as the Bloomingdale Multipurpose Trail and Park. Da Mare is also quoted there calling it basically the same thing.

(The release also indicates that work will begin by next week! Opening still scheduled for next fall.)

On a semi related point, the contract is for $54 million and involves repairing 40 viaducts. Makes you wonder about the occasional single L station rehab that costs about the same amount.

Interesting you mention that, because before they went up, most of the building looked black and had a really cool look to it. I mean I still like the contrast, but something looked more sleek and modern when the whole thing was darker colors. Plus it might have won some folks over that weren't too big on the randomness.

Why not,,,the key is getting your first great modern building built...once people enjoy the taste of it...they will come asking for more :D:D

Am I the only one who liked the 606? The logo was awesome, and an unconventional park needs an unconventional name.

I dunno, seemed weird to me to try and change the name of something that had already become pretty well known under a different name.

Also, to me, 606 is a great concept shoehorned onto something that doesn't quite live up to it. The trail exists in a relatively small part of the city and 606 is supposed to be representative of the whole city.

The logo is quite nice though.

I liked it too. But I'm one of those people who responds to a cashier's asking me for my ZIP with "57" ... the 606 is assumed.

There's plenty of history and culture in the area, and I think it's just a waste not to use a contextual name remembering or honoring that. Evoke a famous place, person, institution, whatever. Even just using "Bloomingdale" (as they seem to be doing now), or referring to the freight RR that built it or the industrial heritage, would be better than a semi meaningless number. There's plenty of disappearing history and culture, so why miss an opportunity to place a marker remembering it; to me this feels a little bit like letting ancient Bronzeville churches get bulldozed. And even if a new name is invented from whole cloth, at least have it be more descriptive or relevant. As for the logo, IMHO it looks like a bad attempt at deco, like a cover graphic for the menu for a greasy spoon in the lobby of a budget hotel.

According to the 606 twitter feed, "606" refers to the project as a whole, including the parks attached to the trail, while "Bloomingdale Trail" only refers to the elevated portion. I wonder if they're going to try to extend the 606 beyond the Bloomingdale corridor.

The 606 highway is a 63 mile long highway in Canada. Personally, it sounds like something a bunch of people in LA would us while giving driving directions: "Take the 10, to the 405, and make sure to merge on to the 606, bra".

The 606 is an awful re-branding of the Bloomingdale trail and I refuse to use it.

In RE to the Tower of Pizza Hut: It's a Monet, from far away its really cool (from the brown line) but up close it's a big 'ol mess.

I completely disagree with all the negative comments on Pizza Hut Tower. The materials are certainly not of the caliber seen on the Roosevelt Tower, but they are a far cry from a lot of the garbage we've seen in this city (I'm looking at you River North). Just be thankful this is anodized aluminum and glass instead of a concrete bunker. Finally, I feel like it is the best from up close, I mean real close. I was sitting in traffic EB on Division waiting for the light the other day and was checking out the storefronts. Man are they beautiful, completely wide open, almost too wide open, it feels like there is no barrier at all between the inside and outside of the building. Apparently the construction workers felt this way too because they had big stripes of tape across each window to keep them from walking (or driving something) into them. Depending on how open the floorplan of the corner tenant is, you will be able to see clear across the inside of the building from Ashland to Division. This is partially due to the fact that there is no core at all in the middle of the building.

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Next topic: "The 606" sounds like something some idiot consultant in LA made up without ever having stepped foot in Chicago. No one here refers to any thoroughfares or freeways by number. All of the ROW's north of Madison are referred to by name, not number. Same goes with our freeway (which seems to be something unique to Chicago making it extra confusing for tourists). It's not "The 90/94", it is "The Kennedy Expressway". And, in the rare event that we refer to a freeway by its number, it is never "The [number here]", it is just "I-90" or without "the" tacked on the front like some valley girl from California. "The 606" is the exact opposite of how Chicagoans tend to refer to their transit options.

Frankly I think the 606 rebrand is insulting to the project and to the city. There is already a perfectly good name for that trail, one that organically originated over time. We don't need some stupid rework by a bunch of clueless marketing consultants. It doesn't really matter anyhow since people will just call it Bloomingdale Trail anyways just like they still call the Sears Tower the Sears Tower.

Apparently the reason for the attempted re-branding is that the consultants decided "Bloomingdale Trail" would be too difficult to translate to merchandise or other branding opportunities because it is too similar to "Bloomingdale's" which to me sounds like a bullshit excuse for a consultant to rack up some extra billable hours on the city's dime. Bloomingdale Ave has been a name for a very long time and if Bloomingdale's want to sue, they can go shove it up their ass. Ironically "the 606" logo uses very similar font and is stylized similarly to the Bloomingdale's logo which you would think might make the chances of a lawsuit much higher than if we were just using the words "Bloomingdale Trail" instead of "The 606: Featuring the Bloomingdale Trail" or whatever other dumbass ideas they come up with to put on a t-shirt.

http://logansquarist.com/wp-content/...e-606-Logo.jpg
logansquarist.com

http://wolfgangpuckicedcoffee.com/ne...omingdales.gif
wolfgangpuckicedcoffee.com
(also, Wolfgang Puck can shove it up his ass too)