Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Grand Plaza is the single ugliest piece of shit that has ever emerged from Chicago's soil
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It's really bad, but it's almost fun to reimagine its potential if a creative developer were able to buy it and reposition it.
Part of the problem is that the design is halfway between weird 80s-era retrofuturist and 2000s-era 'classy' beige River North aesthetics. If you abandon the latter and focus on the former, I think it could be a really cool, interesting building.
Imagine hiring Ronan to redesign it – paint it another color (black?) or reclad if feasible, envelope the balconies in glass and extend the interior square footage out to it (could be configured to act like these –
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cold-we...ens-1484837629) , and build a veritable shit-ton of liner units on every side of the base (these could be duplex if the existing ceiling heights of the garage floors are too low).
There's a lot of potential for a creative developer, provided the mechanisms of building code aren't too constraining.