Many thanks to Adebayo Onigbanjo (Twitter user @iyarn) for keeping me up to speed on the tower crane at One South Halsted. These photos are from Thursday; alas, the excitement of London got the better of my attention span, so by now, I presume the crane is fully assembled and lifting the heavy stuff.
You think Chicago has tower cranes? Okay, yes it does. Chicago does have tower cranes. But London has tower cranes like they’re being given away. Every direction you look, cranes. Turn the corner, another crane. Look to the left, you might see 10 tower cranes. On one site. There might be too much home work to do here, but for now, just have a few photos. If I figure out what the words should be, I’ll post ’em later.
A tweet from The Big Green W yesterday confirmed that the Hotel Zachary has reached a construction milestone.
Then the Hotel Zachary Twitter account joined the fun as well, tweeting a photo of Hickory Street Capital’s Tom Ricketts (you might know him for his other gig as the guy who brought a World Series trophy to Wrigley Field) signing the final beam.
#FlyTheBigGreenW indeed. There’s still a lot of work to do to get the Hotel Zachary into full-functioning hospitality mode, so let’s not put the tower crane on the endangered list quite yet. The 175 rooms and countless eateries will open in 2018 in time for another season of Cubs baseball, plus all the concerts and entertainment Wrigley Field and the newly-opened Park At Wrigley can host.
Tuesday-morning view of the Hotel Zachary from a swift-moving L train. (I blame all my blurry photos on swift-moving L trains.)
1001 West Roosevelt, site of the new St. Ignatius College Prep Athletic Center, seen from Skydeck Chicago.
At the corner of West Roosevelt Road and South Morgan Street, Heneghan Wrecking has hauled off the last remnants of the former Provision Theater, making space for St. Ignatius College Prep to get started on its new athletic center.
Permitted for demolition on March 13, the site at 1001 West Roosevelt is a blank canvas now. Not much information is available yet for the new facility, but the coveted building permit will spill all the secrets as soon as it’s issued, likely in the very near future.
Chicago’s a big city, with a pretty good transportation system. But it’s hard to get to, say for example, 32 tower cranes all in one day. Which is why Skydeck Chicago was built at the Sears Tower. All of the tower cranes, all in one place. With a couple exceptions. I missed a few, like Vista Tower, One Grant Park, and 1101 South Wabash, which can’t be seen, and 8 East Huron and Wicker Park Connection, which I simply brain-lapsed on.
Before we get to the many many photos, a quick recap of One Grant Park:
The address is 1200 South Indiana Avenue in the South Loop. The 76-story apartment tower will have 792 rental units, 622 parking spaces(!), and 12,000 square feet of retail.
Crescent Heights is the developer, Rafael Viñoly Architects did the design, and McHugh Construction is the general contractor. (One Grant Park is one of seven McHugh tower cranes in Chicago right now.)
Shout-out to Twitter user @sigalfano who let me know, after some guesswork, that a tower crane stub had been planted at No. 508 (508 West Diversey Parkway) on Friday. It joins One South Halsted in the stub group, with full assembly likely while I’m in England. So take pictures and videos of it going up and send them the blog’s way.
This is the only tower crane in the Chicago skies right now for Macon Construction Group, the general contractor tasked with building the 12-story, 53-apartment Pappageorge Haymes design.
