Bye bye parking lot, hello hotel, as work begins at 110 West Huron Street in River North.

Piles of rubble and dirt have replaced the surface parking lot at Huron and Clark Streets in River North. That means work is officially underway for the 17-story, 185-room hotel at 110 West Huron from Akara Partners.

Akara received a foundation permit from the City of Chicago back on August 24. Curiously, they already have a tower crane permit as well, and it was issued more than two weeks before the foundation permit, on August 11. And to make things just a tad more confusing, the permit doesn’t actually say “tower crane” on it:

FOUNDATION DESIGN FOR THE INSTALLATION AN OPERATION OF LIEBHERR 316 EC-H12 LITRONIC

So unless you were paying ridiculously close attention, you may have missed it. I, for one, was indeed paying ridiculously close attention. But I missed it too. Anyway, I’m over that now. Pretty much.

The hotel is a design by Chicago’s NORR Inc on North LaSalle, and will include, according to the permit, ground-level retail space and a rooftop restaurant.

The general contractor is M.A. Mortenson Company of Wisconsin. You remember them from their work on the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center in Milwaukee we visited in July.