The South Loop in all its south loopiness. (Courtesy of Joe Zekas/YoChicago!)
Some days we put one and one together and get two. Other days we get eleven. Today feels like an “eleven” day.
Joe Zekas over at YoChicago! has a thing for photographing Chicago from altitude. Sometimes it’s a plane. Sometimes it’s a helicopter. Often it’s just from the roofs of many of downtown’s buildings. So it wasn’t all that surprising when a couple of days ago he sent us a picture of the South Loop taken from the roof of 1000 South Clark a couple of weeks ago. What caught out attention was the little truck in the corner. A soil sampling truck.
Hello, Sailor! (Courtesy of Joe Zekas/YoChicago!)
There’s one thing we’ve learned in the dozen years we’ve been publishing: As sure as a robin thrusting his beak through the snow signals the coming of spring, a geotechnical crew tasting Chicago soil means someone is going to build something big.
A check of city records for this location shows that it’s part of the Roosevelt Collection property, and has been previously approved for a 380-foot-tall tower, or a maximum F.A.R. of 12.5. It also shows that as of 2013, a 425 foot tower was proposed.
So now that the seeds of curiosity have been sown, when will we see a skyscraper sprout? It’s hard to say. Sometimes the lag between truck and tower is a few months. Sometimes it’s a year or more. But whatever happens, it gives us another location to add to our list of properties to keep an eye on.
