Chicago made it back to double digits Thursday, as W.E. O’Neil finished erecting the city’s 10th active tower crane at 1371 West Randolph Street in the West Loop. That crane will build the seven-story parking garage for the Plumbers Local 130, on what used to be a portion of their surface parking lot.
I would once again like to point out that those guys up there, especially out on the jib, are in no danger of losing their jobs to me.
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Donate1200 West Carroll is a blank canvas
Speaking of Carroll Avenue demos . . .
With demolition all but wrapped up, the northwest corner of Carroll and Racine in the West Loop is ready for redevelopment at the hands of Sterling Bay. Here’s our May story about the demolitions, and the new office building on the way, 1200 West Carroll.
Here’s the progression of demolition from late May into July.
There’s a lap pool? 
Nothing but silos now at ADM
Heneghan Wrecking is getting down to the last of the concrete silos at the former ADM Milling Company at 1300 West Carroll in the West Loop. I wouldn’t say progress has slowed, but I will venture the opinion that large, thick columns of solid concrete aren’t easy to break up. Again, just my opinion.
Here are photos taken Monday, July 19:
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DonateW.E. O’Neil plants a tower crane stub at 1371 West Randolph
As one Randolph Street tower crane goes, so comes another.
The Plumbers Union 130 parking garage has a tower crane stub in the ground as of last Monday, according to the kind folks on site from W.E. O’Neil. The rest of the crane should be up by the end of this week, allowing Chicago to crawl back into double digits.
Not sure why double digits is such a big deal to me, other than indicating some sort of threshold for where we “should” or “shouldn’t” be, tower-cranewise. It means nothing substantial, really. However, I scored in double digits exactly once in my high school basketball career, and that IS important.
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DonateWith the removal at 609 West Randolph, we’re down to 9 tower cranes
Bummer, right? No glass yet either, but I’m pretty sure that will get started any day now.
ADM Demolition, June 2021
Just because I haven’t posted demolition progress at the ADM Milling Co. demolition since May doesn’t mean I haven’t been over there watching.
The silos seem to have gotten a bit of a reprieve while efforts were concentrated on bringing down the office building. That’s completely gone now, save for the rubble, and Heneghan Wrecking has started punching holes in the silos again.
Chronologically, here’s a metric ton of photos taken throughout June. I wish there had been a way to stack them like a pile of bricks:
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DonateA tower crane, by many other names, comes down from Fulton Market.
Remove 1043 Fulton form Chicago’s active tower crane list. You can also remove 1025 West Fulton, 237 North Aberdeen, 1045 West Fulton, and 1045 On Fulton, since all those monikers have been used for this property. (Not this property, though.)
No matter the name, Power Construction topped out the 12-story building in May, and now the tower crane is being disassembled and removed from the site. Still waiting on the first signs of curtain-wall glass.
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DonateEvo Union Park and Parq Fulton have topped out
Don’t believe me? Marquette Management has proof. And it looks like it was quite a party. Congrats to Marquette Companies, Power Construction, and Brininstool + Lynch on the big two-fer!
There’s steel making progress at CA6
Sorry, that should read “They’re still making progress at CA6.” Pardon my typing.
Anyway, I snapped a couple shots Monday as work continues on this eight-story, 72-unit condo building from Belgravia Group.
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DonateFarewell, 320 South Canal Tower Crane. You served the city well
Parting is always such sweet sorrow, but tower cranes don’t stay in one place forever, so shed no tears for the Potain MR298 Luffing Jib workhorse atop 320 South Canal in the West Loop. Last week, a derrick crane was installed to dismantle and lower the tower crane, and that it did, with removal, from what I could see 52 stories below, wrapping up Monday.
I made it over here in time to see a couple crane sections on the ground, and one loaded up onto a truck to be hauled away. I tried to wait for the truck to pull out of the construction site, for the dramatic grand exit, but I lack patience. I also tried waiting around long enough to see the derrick crane lift a load of steel up to the top. I didn’t last that long. This was interesting though. I’m going to make some assumptions here, but that load of steel looked heavy, and that derrick crane doesn’t have much reach away from the glass cladding on the west face of the tower. There were guy-wires on each end of the load, running on tracks running up the side of the tower, to keep the steel from rotating, which would have sent one end or the other crashing through the façade. Or at least scratching the heck out of the glass. Who knows, maybe these are common, but they’re something I’d never noticed before. The photo in the gallery below with the two red circles shows those attachments.
15 minutes elapsed between the time I took this first photo of the steel lift and the second photo, and it’s only about 3/4 of the way up. Glad that crew has more patience than I.
15 minutes later . . . 
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