New McCormick Place Marriott Won’t Miss Out on Rooftop Bar Trend
Whether it’s the neighborhood-friendly Hotel Godfrey in River North, or the new über-luxe hostelries squeezing in along the river, it seems like these days every new Chicago hotel wants to have a rooftop bar. Aside from being a money-printing machine, they’re also a publicity bonanza in an era when every second of everyone’s lives is being snapbooked and facechatted to a salivating internet. The new Marriott...
Another South Side Stadium Will Fly a Financial Flag
Fifteen days after the White Sox ballpark officially became Guaranteed Rate Field, another nearby sporting palace has gotten a new name. The DePaul University basketball arena, formerly known as the McCormick Place Events Center, will now be known as the Wintrust Arena. It’s hardly the first time that a home-grown financial powerhouse has used sports to leave national audiences scratching their heads. In addition to the...
Marriott Marquis Makes Its Beds at McCormick Place
It still doesn’t look like a hotel, yet, but work continues toward that very end on the Goettsch Partners-designed Marriott Marquis Chicago in the Prairie Avenue District. ** The 39-story hotel tower broke ground back in July. It’s bringing 1206 guest rooms and 90,000 square feet of meeting space to the expanding McCormick Place campus, perfect for visiting Big East teams playing DePaul at the McCormick Place Event Center...
McCormick Place Event Center Ups Its Game
Clark Construction continues to take its game to the next level, as crews progress on the McCormick Place Event Center. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the 300,000-square-foot Event Center is just one part of the project to turn the McCormick Place campus into a major entertainment district, which includes adding hotel rooms, offices, and retail space to the Prairie Avenue District. (Or is it McCormick Square?) We’re...
Prairie Court Not Yet Brought To Order In Prairie District
We spent a good bit of time around the Prairie Avenue District over the past week or so. Once we finished gawking at the big equipment along Cermak Road, we headed back north a bit, to the intersection of Prairie Avenue and 18th Street, to see what, if anything, was happening with the new Prairie Court townhome development. It should come as no big surprise to find a rather large lot of nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. There are...
Game On at McCormick Place Event Center
Please, don’t call it DePaul Arena. Granted, the new McCormick Place Event Center *will* be the new home for DePaul University’s men’s and women’s basketball beginning with the 2017-18 season, and DePaul has contributed some $70 million to the project, but expect the versatile new facility to be much more than a home-court hoops venue. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the 300,000-square-foot Event...
Marriott Making its Marquis in Chicago
Work is progressing on the new Marriott Marquis Chicago hotel, at 2121 South Prairie Avenue in the Prairie Avenue District. Slated for completion in 2017, the 39-story tower will provide 1,209 guest rooms and over 90,000 square feet of meeting space. The McPier development will be directly connected to McCormick Place, and features the renovation of the American Book Company building at 330 East Cermak Road. When we last visited,...
American Book Company Building Begins A New Chapter
Seems like only yesterday we had to tell folks about the demise of another century-plus-old Chicago building. And we wouldn’t blame you if you’re getting tired of hearing about the demolition of the city’s built environment. So how about today, we turn our attention to one Chicago relic, which once seemed headed toward certain doom, now being rehabbed and reborn in Chicago’s Prairie Avenue District. At 330 East...
Rees House Getting Along Well With New Neighbors
Nine months ago, in a slow motion engineering ballet, the Rees House was moved from 2110 South Prairie Avenue, the place where it was built in 1888, to a safer location up the street and out of the way of the latest McCormick Place expansion. The historic home now sits at 2017 South Prairie Avenue, and The Chicago Architecture Blog’s Daniel Schell rolled by recently to take a look. He tells us that visually, it gets along fine...
Status Update: 18th and Prairie
Demolition crews are busy massacring an old warehouse and a surface parking lot in the Prairie Avenue District, turning them in to Chicago’s newest townhome development. The project at East 18th Street and South Prairie Avenue is happening where the award-winning Lucien Lagrange-designed XO residential towers failed to take off. The Chicago Architecture Blog’s Daniel Schell passed by and found heavy equipment tearing the...
