Three Building Plan Brings 600-Foot-Tall Skyscraper to Fulton Market

Written By Editor on January 13, 2022

When we first started this publication almost 20 years ago, 15 stories was considered to be a huge building for Fulton Market. Now, people don’t even notice when a 25-story tower goes up. But they will notice the newest skyscraper planned for what used to be Chicago’s meat packing district: a 50-story apartment/hotel block designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture.

The new structure will climb to 600 feet, and house 500 apartments, and a 200-room hotel. It’s part of a three-building complex expected to wipe away any memories of the food distributors who used to call this block home. Many of them decamped for the Pilsen/Bridgeport area when the property was put into play back in the year David Bowie records suddenly became very hard to get.

The other two buildings are 25-story and 10-story office buildings. The smaller of the two sports a gabled roof that is kinda-sorta reminiscent of the Loyola University Law Center. The larger one is the stack of glass blocks atop a soft loft podium that is becoming a recurring theme in downtown Chicago.

This new plan replaces a much smaller three-building plan that we told you about back in 2016, and another three-building plan that we told you about in 2019. With a new developer, and new architecture firm, we’ll see if the third time is the charm for three-building plans.