One Vote Means Two New Skyscrapers for Chicago
While you count down your final days in quarantine pretending to pay attention to work conference calls while scrubbing the grout, giving the dog a bath, and watching reruns of Press Your Luck (no whammies!), the steady march of skyscrapers through City Hall continues unabated. Today, Chicago City Council approved a project that will alter the city’s skyline in a delightful way. March 2020 rendering of 400 North Lake Shore...
Another Marquee Lights Up Chicago’s Theater District
Lots of apartment buildings claim to be “in the center of it all.” But 90% of the time that’s just real estate agent hype. This time, it’s for real. The Marquee at Block 37 has started leasing, allowing people to live across the street from such important Chicago landmarks as Macy’s on State, the Oriental Theater, Daley Plaza, and the Lavazza where hundreds of Chicago Architecture articles have been...
Status Update: Block37
If you haven’t stopped by Block37 lately, that’s OK. The Chicago Architecture Blog’s Daniel Schell has, and brings us these pictures of the residential tower’s progress at 25 West Randolph Street. Designed by friends-of-the-blog, SCB, the enormous apartment building is being grafted onto the northern part of the Loop shopping mall. We use the word “enormous” because this addition will have 690...
Slice of Life: Sky Toilets in Flight / Afternoon Delight
Loop Spy Ann had her cameraphone at the ready when she saw the ceremonial changing of the toilets at Block37. They’re part of the comfort gear for workers putting up the new residential tower on top of the mall at 25 West Randolph Street. For those of you who have never built a skyscraper before, it can take a long time to get from the top where you’re working to the ground floor where there may or may not be a privy....
Status Update: Block37.5
The bits and pieces are coming together for the new residential tower rising above the Block37 mall in downtown Chicago (25 West Randolph Street). The picture above was taken yesterday by Loop Spy Ryan, and shows that the massive weight-shifting truss that makes the new building work with the old building has been enclosed. Meanwhile, concrete forms are in place so that the floors of the SCB-designed building can be poured. When...
SCB Explains the Block37 Residential Tower
For the last few months, construction crews have been busy trying to jam an apartment building on top of downtown Chicago’s Block37 mall. The tower at 25 West Randolph Street is perched on the northern edge of the mall, flush with a very busy street in the heart of the city’s Theater District. But space constraints weren’t the only challenge that the architects at Solomon Cordwell Buenz had to overcome. We...
Block37 Residences Has its Official Groundbreaking Sans Ground
The new apartment tower being perched atop the Block37 mall, transportation, and office complex had its official groundbreaking ceremony yesterday. But what do you do when you want to have a groundbreaking and there’s no ground to break? Chips and dip in the pedway. Chicago Architecture Blog photographer Milosh Kosanovich was there as the CIM Group hosted 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly and a gaggle of real estate types at...
Status Update: Transferring to Block37
For the last few weeks we’ve been showing you photographs of the latest construction at Block37, where an apartment tower is being added to the mall and office tower. That tower will rest on concrete slabs and a steel truss that will transfer the weight of the new building above onto the existing columns already inside the mall. In these photographs, you can see the 30-foot-tall steel transfer truss being assembled on the roof....
Status Update: Block37½
The long-awaited residential portion of the Block37 retail/office/hotel/residential/transit development is progressing in earnest. Just days after the city issued construction permits and a formal announcement was made by owner CIM Group, workers were spotted on the roof vacuuming up the gravel. A couple of weeks later, and the construction has entered a much more serious phase, complete with sidewalk barricades and steel beams....
Block37 Residences Goes From Puffery to Paperwork as Project Pulls Permits
Block37, the downtown Chicago mall and office complex, is taking another step toward achieving its full potential. CIM Group, the development’s owner, is moving forward with plans for an apartment tower. If this sounds familiar, it should. Crain’s Chicago Business reported this was coming back in March of this year. But yesterday, CIM put out a press release letting the world know it’s going to happen for...
