787-Foot-High Hopes Dashed in Streeterville
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This lot on the corner of North Fairbanks Court and East Ohio Street was just a parking lot when I moved to Chicago. Then the parking lot was torn up and a big pit made for the construction of a 787-foot-tall, 58-story residential skyscraper called 560 North Fairbanks. Then the housing market collapsed, and the pit was filled in, smoothed out, and given a nice fresh coat of asphalt. Now we’re right back where we started when I moved to Chicago six years ago. Except that the hot dog hut that used to squat in the corner of this lot is gone. And we are all poorer for it.