Union Station Redevelopment Making Tracks Tonight
The redevelopment of Chicago Union Station (210 South Canal Street) continues to chug along (see what we did there?) and the next step in the process is a public meeting to go over the most recent plans for the 93-year-old transportation hub. It was just about a year ago that Amtrak tapped neighbor Riverside Development to turn the aging, but vital, piece of the city’s infrastructure into something more than it is, and something...
Half a Billion in Pocket, Devs Ready to Rock Old Post Office
The Building That Wouldn’t Die is poised to start its second life. A couple of days before Christmas, the developers trying to resuscitate Chicago’s massive, menacing, moldy Old Main Post Office were given a half a billion dollars to start construction on their proposal to turn the lumbering landmark into a thriving mixed-use complex. This is the second loan the 601W Companies has been given by JPMorgan Chase. The...
Chicago Union Station Finally Gets Its Towers, Plus a Hotel and More
Riverside Investment and Development has been selected by Amtrak to redevelop its property in Chicago’s West Loop, including the historic Chicago Union Station. In the decade-and-a-half that this blog has been chronicling Chicago’s built environment, Amtrak has put forward a series of increasingly ambitious plans for maximizing its real estate assets in downtown Chicago, which include the station’s...
150 North Riverside Opens For Business
It’s hard to believe that just four short years ago there were people scoffing at the idea of balancing a 54-story skyscraper in the middle of a set of very active rail lines on the edge of the Chicago River. But here we are today, with the official opening of 150 North Riverside. It’s not the first time that Goettsch Partners has cantilevered an office building on either side of a central core. But it’s the first...
Old Saint Pat’s Tower Powers Upward
Crews from Power Construction have been busting their humps for the last few months, trying to get as much of the parking garage at 625 West Adams built as they can before the dead of winter sets in. With The Dead officially here, photographer Michael Lyons sent over some photographs showing their progress; and it’s not too shabby. Concrete has already been poured up to the fifth floor of the office building occasionally known...
Amtrak Honored For Union Station Renovations
If you prowl the halls of Congress, you don’t hear a lot of good things said about Amtrak. It’s a popular punching bag among beltway insiders who like to grips about money not spent in their districts. But if you’re a regular Amtrak rider (3k miles this year for me), you’ve probably noticed that things are — slowly, but surely — getting better at America’s largest passenger railroad. One of those...
West Loop Goes From Zero to Two Hotels Overnight
It’s kind of strange to think of it, but until just a few days ago, there was no hotel in theWest Loop. The neighborhood smack in the middle of all things Chicago has seen tremendous development in the last ten years, but until the Hampton Inn/Homewood Suites hotel sandwich opened at 108 North Jefferson Street, you had to go to another neighborhood to lay your head. Now, to be clear, we’re talking about the actual West...
Turning a West Loop Alley Into a Park
Unless you lived at the Randolph Place Lofts (165 North Canal Street), you probably didn’t have a need to use the strange, hanging alley that arced across the vacant space in the 100 block between Lake and Randolph Streets. Aside from moving trucks engorging themselves, and trainspotters leering at the silver streaks below, it was a quiet place. But all that’s changed now that 150 North Riverside is under construction,...
Wave a Tiny Flag For Chicago’s Limestone Leviathan
As you commute in and out of the city on the Eisenhower Expressway, you may feel your heart skip a beat when you notice tiny workmen climbing around scaffolding clinging to the Old Main Post Office like some kind of post-apocalyptic game of Donkey Kong. But don’t rush home to tell the wife and kids that the decades-dead building has finally come to life again. Last Wednesday the city issued a permit for facade repairs: EXTERIOR...
West Loop’s Newest Residences About to Rise on Des Plaines Street
The construction just never seems to stop in the West Loop, where 165 North Des Plaines is about to become the latest residential block to rise between the Chicago River and the Kennedy Expressway. We documented GREC’s 165 quite extensively both before and after it was announced this past spring. Up to this point, the work has been focused on 156 North Jefferson, which was an elderly office building until recently. Then it was...
