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Originally Posted by untitledreality
Railroad tracks + Redefining the river edge = expensive.
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Here's how it was worded in the Crain's blog post:
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The $29 million will go not for the tower itself but an adjacent 1.5-acre public park. Both the tower and the park will be built on a platform atop Metra and Amtrak railroad tracks.
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Unless Greg Hinz has the details wrong (which I recognize is a likely possibility), the developer was already planning on building a "platform" for the tower. Is the extension of that platform past the tracks really a $29 million engineering feat? (Note that Hinz doesn't mention the river walk, either.) I guess I was under the impression that Hines would have had to deal with the railroad in
some capacity, anyway. Maybe it wouldn't have been a $29 million platform extension, but it surely would have cost
something.
I'm also skeptical about the cost of "redefining the river's edge." If you compare the drawings to aerial photographs, you can pretty clearly see that this isn't going to be some huge change like we saw along the main branch of the river. It actually looks like it will be pretty minor.
My main beef is with the park's design. It presents such a tall, sheer wall to Lake Street that I doubt it'll end up attracting anyone but the tower's office workers. Were it more accessible, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with the TIF money. But I don't think it will be; in fact, it seems designed
so that it won't be.