CHICAGO | Wolf Point - West Tower | 493 FT | 48 FLOORS
 

Height: 950ft, 750ft, 525ft
Floor count: Unkown
Location: Wolf Point (confluence of South, North, and Main Branches of the Chicago River)
Neighborhood: River North
Architect: Pelli Clarke Pelli; bKL Architecture
Developer: Hines Interests LP

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View from Wolf Point (taken by i_am_hydrogen)
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This article is more than a month old but that's still fairly recent, anyone know anything about this development?

http://www.suntimes.com/business/102...ago-river.html




The Kennedy family, partnering with a major development firm and an internationally renowned architect, is crafting plans to build on its Wolf Point property along the Chicago River.

People familiar with the proposal said the Kennedys envision a three-tower complex for residential and office use on the four-acre site. Their chosen architect is Cesar Pelli, who designed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia that were once the world’s tallest.

No supertall structure is planned at Wolf Point, said Greg Van Schaack, senior vice president for Hines Interests LP, the development firm working with the Kennedys. He said the tallest building probably would be in the 60-story range.

Sources said the development team already has briefed the city’s planning agency about the pending project. Van Schaack said a formal proposal should be delivered to City Hall in about March or April.

If the plan requires a zoning change for the property, the city would begin a hearing process that could last several months.

Wolf Point is just west of the Merchandise Mart and where the Chicago River divides into branches. The property has been used just for parking for years, but is within one of the oldest settled parts of the city.

Historical records show that Wolf Point and nearby riverbanks were the commercial beginnings of the pioneer town, with everything an emerging civilization needed: taverns, trading posts, a hotel, factory and a government office.

Wolf Point has been under Kennedy ownership since the 1940s, and while the family has eyed it for large-scale construction, its timing never worked out.

By readying a project now, it’s trying to get ahead of the next downtown construction boom and realize a substantial profit. Christopher Kennedy, who oversees the Chicago property, did not return a phone call Wednesday.

“Just look at the real estate that borders the Chicago River. Enough said,” Van Schaack said.

Houston-based Hines is among the most prolific builder of office buildings in downtown Chicago.

Uppermost in Van Schaack’s mind was the 60-story 300 N. La Salle building, a riverfront trophy Hines built in 2009 and later sold for a record price per square foot for a Chicago office tower. It sold for $655 million, about $503 per square foot.

But the firm stumbled with another site across the river from Wolf Point, the northeast corner of Lake and Canal. In 2009, it scuttled a proposed 50-story office building there because the credit markets collapsed, even though two large tenants had committed to move in.

Hines has worked with Pelli, whose mostly modernist buildings appear around the world. But Pelli’s only contribution to the Chicago skyline is an office building at 181 W. Madison, which opened in 1990.

Jack George, the zoning lawyer hired to represent the project, said Pelli’s involvement shows the Kennedys’ commitment to quality design. “Whatever is proposed there will be something extremely special for our city,” George said.

I know many of the people who know the Kennedy's and used to know some of them. When I brought it up to someone talking about a social function that Chris is having at the Merchandise Mart (he still gets to do that and is still a VIP, though Falanga took over about a year ago and the Kennedy's obviously no longer own the place), they had heard nothing about it. Seems like people in the "inner circle" of his social life have no idea that this is happening. I'm going to guess the Kennedy's were just testing the waters and nothing will come of it.

When and if WP is developed, will the riverwalk be extended to this site? In the back of my mind, I kinda thought whoever develops the property is obligated to construct the riverwalk. But I could be wrong.

^^^ All owners of riverfront property downtown are now obligated to construct public access to their water I believe. The problem is not much seems to be done to obligate them to connect their public access to their neighbors.

^^^^^
That's a good point. It is too bad that developers aren't forced to make it all contiguous. Quite frusterating!

All owners of riverfront property anywhere in the city are obligated to do this, although I think there are some exceptions for businesses that require riverfront access.

Obviously existing buildings are grandfathered, and even extensive renovations or additions to existing buildings do not trigger the Riverwalk Ordinance's requirements.

So I take it this isn't happening in the near future :shrug:

It's a nice site in a prime location, something good should go there.

Worse is that most of the bridges don't have a convenient way around. If you could get around Grand and Ohio bridges, you could walk along the river all the way from Oak Street to Kinzie right now. I really like how they've incorporated a pathway basically *through* the Chicago Ave bridge.

Yeah, that's one of the coolest spaces in the city - a real well-kept secret. I wish they would take a million or so and smooth out the kinks, though. That place is a nightmare on a bike, and also for pedestrians who can't see a cyclist approaching.

Between the Lakefront Trail, the Bloomingdale Trail, riverfront trails, and North Branch Trail we're soon to have an extensive network of grade-separated, regional bikeways criss-crossing the city. There are numerous other unused rail viaducts that can also be converted, especially on the South Side.

Meeting
 

From Ald. Reilly

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900 feet?!?!

^ wow! 525', 750', and 900'.

seems ambitious, but this site needs ambition.

I was hoping for a supertall, but 1000' is such an arbitrary number. With the exception of Trump, this will be the tallest new building in 20 years.

:banana::banana::banana:

I read a Hines PDF a few months ago indicating that the West Tower would be the first to start. Best guess is that it's a rental. If Hines doesn't anticipate developing the other two towers (which include office space) for several years, then there's less of a conflict with their other project across the way, River Pointe.

900' easily becomes 800' which easily becomes 725' and so on. I'm not too concerned with numbers above 500'; it really doesn't make a difference anymore (its an arbitrary number as you say). But I don't know why, depending on spire height, Hines doesn't just add a bit more height to a spire so that they can drum up interest for anchor tenants (and possible namesake tenants) in a "supertall." Even if only the rentals get out in the next ten years, a 525' tower on this site isn't awful for the time being; certainly better than a surface parking lot. But the rental market is quickly being saturated and I've seen lots of commentary that this apartment boomlet may overbuild, especially in River North. We'll see if any of this gets done.

I realize this is all very very early in whatever process we might see materialize, but am I the only one left scratching their head over the 885 parking spaces in the most visually prominent tower of the development? I am envisioning twenty floors of podia right on the apex of the river and its making me very very sad.

Will Cesar Pelli still be the architect?

O man! This made my day!

It is a mixed use tower, so the parking ratio is a bit useless, especially as we don't know what will be mixed with the 600 units. And hopefully the podium will be executed well enough that it won't even look like a podium. Time will tell...

900 footer, I like the sound of that! The meeting is May 29th, so should we see some design soon after that ?

There's a little over 250 visible spaces in the current surface lot. So the proposal would basically be about five times that amount of parking. Hopefully they can wrap it in a way that doesn't seem too obtrusive.

Once that's built, it would be really nice if the Apparel Mart could do somesomething to improve their interface with Kinzie from a pedestrian standpoint.

^^^
Also, it just occured to me that the whole surface is sunken right now, so if they build the whole thing on a platform to bring the building, streets and plazas up to Orleans level, they may be able to get a level or two of parking obscured below the whole complex to take away a good 150+ spaces from the inevitable podium.

And I can't imagine why the apparel mart would put any money into addressing the Kinzie entrance - there is nothing there but a storage place and it is cut off by a viaduct on one side and a bridge on the other. Moreover, I don't really see how this project could serve as an impetus for that. Plus, I imagine that that area is a loading dock / warehouse-type area given the fact that there is a loading dock and it is in the basement. Does anyone know what is down there? If its just mechanical I really can't imagine that will ever get better. Plus, if something were to be changed about the building, I'd choose the color of that cement (which hundreds of thousands if not millions of people see per year) over the Kinzie entrance (which a few locals deal with).