COVID Stalls Yet Another Big Downtown Chicago Project
In the same week that Chicago fully reopened for business — both serious and monkey — comes word of yet another downtown project that has been pushed back by the coronavirus pandemic. December, 2018 rendering of the Aon Center Observatory. The Chicago Tribune reports that we’re going to have to wait until at least 2024 for the new observatory and thrill ride at the top of the Aon Center at 200 East Randolph Street. This is at...
Deco Like a Gekko: Old Chicago Post Office Gets an Athletic Green Lid
If you watched Star Trek after Svengoolie on channel 26 Saturday night, you learned that jealousy is a terrible thing. But jealousy is also what makes the real estate world go ’round. Your cousin gets a two-flat in Ravenswood, you get a four-flat in Lincoln Park. Your neighbor puts a trampoline in his backyard, you put in a pool. The dot-com wannabe across town gets its own food truck, your dot-com wannabe puts in a food court...
Another Downtown Construction Project Stopped by COVID-19
For the second time in two weeks, we get news that a big downtown Chicago construction project has been halted. The Chicago Tribune reports that plans for a $185 million observatory at the top of the Aon Center are on hold because of the pandemic. Aon Center Observatory rendering The paper says the owners are waiting to see if a “potential treatment or cure” is developed in the near-term, and if any design changes have to...
Old Chicago Post Office to Get Unexpected Riverwalk Segment
One of the nation’s largest redevelopment projects is chugging away in Chicago’s West Loop. For the last year, the once-abandoned, century-old Old Chicago Main Post Office building has been filling up with office tenants from PepsiCo to Uber to Ferrara Candy Company. Now the tenants of what is currently branded The Post Office will get a little bonus green space. The redevelopers of this building, 601W Companies, have...
Aon Center Elevator Attraction Looks Like A Go
Late this week the Chicago Plan Commission is expected to vote on whether to allow the new owners of the Aon Center to clamp a glass elevator to the northwest corner of the city’s third-tallest building and put a thrill ride on the roof. If you’re not into that whole “waiting for stuff to happen” thing, here are some tea leaves for you to read: It’s gonna happen. How can we prognosticate in such an...
Every Web Page About the Aon Center is About to Become Wrong
If you’re a fan of Wikipedia, the wannabe encyclopedia that’s the equivalent of asking a bunch of strangers at a bus stop to do your homework, it will soon need to be updated. Along with the 8,643 other web sites that catalog skyscraper heights. Right now, the Aon Center’s “architectural height” is 1,136 feet. That means to the top of the mechanical room that hides all of the HVAC equipment. That space...
Aon Center is the Latest Skyscraper That Wants to Take You For a Ride
If you want to “hang” at the Aon Center, 601W Companies is cool with that. As long as you do it in its proposed 22-person glass pod hanging off the roof. The New York real estate company has unveiled its $185 million proposal for turning a portion of Chicago’s third-tallest building into a tourist attraction. We’ve known since 601W bought the stoic skyscraper in 2015 for $173 million that it thought there was...
Aon Center’s Glass Elevator-to-the-Sky to be Unveiled Tonight
Glass as an amusement is a big thing these days. It seems to have started with that glass bridge over the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai reservation in Arizona. Now we have a glass slide at the top of the U.S. Bank Building in Los Angeles. The glass “ledges” at the top of the Willis Tower. The glass “tilt” mechanism at the top of 875 North Michigan. And now the Aon Center is getting in on the transparent...
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...
New Construction at the Old Post Office Continues
If you’re an eagle-eyed driver, you may have been able to spot some of the subtle signs of construction work going on at Chicago’s Old Main Post Office which spans the Eisenhower Expressway on your way out of town. For those of you who prefer to keep your eyes on the road, or have other commuting routes, you’ll be happy to know that there actually is work going on at the concrete leviathan beached on the west bank of...
