CHICAGO | 435 N Park | 569 ft | 49 FLOORS | COM
 

Surprised this one hasn't gotten any attention yet (It's on the site of the canceled Waldorf Astoria, sadly it's not that tower, but it's at least something.)

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/5468/4651e.jpg

It's been discussed in the Chicago compilations thread but hadn't had a thread created for it until you came along. :)

I think it's threadworthy. Love the tower, still hate the base

It's definitely thread worthy. First new project in a while that almost breaks the old 700' automatic thread trigger.

Decent tower, crappy base. I like the black mullions and trim a lot though.

Also, can a mod add the Chicago cool face to the thread title? Makes it way easier to lurk the Chicago threads.

Yea I agree for sure, they should just add the base to the tower and make it an 800 footer :cool:

It is actually only 625' (not that 625' in this economy is worthy of being preceded by "only")-- not that close to 700'. That is corroborated on the Soar Website, though they still have the old picture -- the tower has been much improved. For historical reference, I'll just post it here:

http://i.imgur.com/p9jBr.jpg

I think that the glass facing west is really nice (we'll have to see what the rest of the precast ends up looking like). Everything else is a little dungeon-like to the pedestrian.

^Oh well @ the height loss but at least the building is better looking (maybe)

It occurs to me that the statistics on the SOAR site could be outdated with the picture.
Chicago Architecture Blog says 670'. The pot is from after the cosmetic changes, so I'll go with that number. Sorry for the confusion and my incompetence....

There are a couple big pieces of program held in the base, notably a fairly massive grand ballroom which occupies the Northern section [which is height restricted anyways because of the protected view corridor from the Odgen slip to Tribune Tower] that would be hard to economically infuse into the tower itself.

Its not perfect, not its not the worst thing I have ever seen either.


*Since everyone is discussing the height, does anyone know where the 625' (670' w/mechanical) number is being measured from? It could be off a solid 20' if measured from upper Water.

fine by me... if your incompetence means getting a 200+ meter building than I'm all for it ;)

I don't think my incompetence is to blame. But let's try this:

I hear that Wolf Point will definitely not be a super-tall, privately financed by the Kennedy's and Hines and designed by a starchitect (definitely not Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid)...

Now we wait for this to be another slip-up.

Community Meeting on 435-463 North Park Drive on Thursday, March 22

A community meeting will be held on Thursday, March 22 to discuss the development proposed for 435-456 North Park Drive. Sponsored by SOAR and Alderman Reilly's office, this meeting is an opportunity for residents to provide input to the developer, ask questions, etc.

The meeting will take place at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center, 450 N. Cityfront Plaza, in room 621 and will begin promptly at 5:30 PM. RSVPs for this meeting are not necessary.

^^Damn I wish I lived in Chi town...

To begin with I don't understand how we are getting way over 600 feet from a 54 story residential/hotel building. Is the secret sauce in the lobby and amenity floors + mech penthouse + measuring from New Street?

To clear up the height questions, here is an elevation from The Chicago Architecture Blog:

http://blog.chicagoarchitecture.info...streeterville/

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x...dragged-11.jpg

So it is 670 feet, cool

This is a sharp looking tower. So is it 670' or is that an overestimation?

Another re-iteration of MiMA in NYC, which turned out heinous... tombstones sprouting everywhere!

More info on the height of this building. From tonight's SOAR meeting, a new elevation with a new, slightly lower, max height of 635' to the top of the mechanical screen walls.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-K...25287%2529.JPG

Other interesting info from the SOAR meeting:

-They expect to begin soil remediation on the site this June, although when the developer gave this answer the architect seemed surprised it would be so early (for whatever that is worth).
-They expect foundation work to begin at the end of 2012. The project is scheduled to open in the summer of 2015.

-The do not have a contract with the expected hotel brand, however they did say that they were very close. The developer said that he had hoped the deal would have been done before this meeting so he could have disclosed the hotel brand. He did give some clues about who the hotel brand might be. He said:
-The hotel portion of the building would be purchased by the hotel brand, not leased or run by the developer.
-The hotel would be 4 diamond (4-star?).
-The hotel brand is a publicly traded company and that hotels are are small percentage of their total business.
-The hotel brand currently only has about (from memory) 7-8 hotels in the US and another 4-5 internationally.

-The city and the project have a desire to renovate Ogden Plaza (the clock park west of the site), but they have hit a snag with the owner of the parking lot below the park.

-Kinda off the topic of this building, but there were several questions from residents about the parcel of land that is just north of this site. Mostly they said that they have no knowledge of the plans for that site, however at one point Alderman Reilly jumped in and said that he has seen no plans come across his desk for the development of that parcel. There were some other clues about what they know however. When asked about what land 435 N Park might use for it's laydown area for the duration of the project, the developer said that they have a relationship with the owner of the parcel to the north and barring them starting their own development soon, they would use that land for laydown. Also, the Architect stressed that they have designed a fully exposed facade on the North side in the event that a building is not built to the North for a while. Finally, the landscape architect said they have provision in their plans for additional trees and landscaping on the North side of 435 in the event that the development of the site to the North does not happen for while (although he did say it would be scrapped if that site moved forward).

This was my first community meeting on a new project and overall I thought it was pretty interesting, although most of the info we have already seen in the released sketches. I was hoping for a more heated debate, but overall everyone was pretty civil.

P.S. One more, sorta off topic tidbit was from an answer by the Alderman about any traffic studies on the recently dangerous intersection of Illinois and Columbus. He said they have a study and mentioned that one of the options is to lower the speed limit on Columbus in that area. Another option was to narrow Columbus to naturally reduce speeds.