Category Archives: West Loop

Tower crane stub in the house! No, seriously. They built a house for it.

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Flag, Crane, Plane, and Train at 1125 West Van Buren.

Chicago’s most unique new residence is at 1125 West Van Buren, where Tandem has built a new house for its tower crane. Closed in on three sides, with the south façade left open for views of the Eisenhower Expressway(?), the humble abode will protect the crane stub from animal attacks and ogling Target shoppers. More importantly, crews will be on site this week to erect the full tower crane, making up for the one Chicago just lost at 717 South Clark.

 

318 North Carpenter gets its glass in gear

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Raise a glass to 3158 North Carpenter.

Seven-story office buildings tend to get built pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. Ferris Bueller taught us that. As soon as you walk away from 318 North Carpenter, GC The Big Green W will have made significant progress again by the time you walk around the next corner.

Walsh has now hit the next milestone; the first row of glass has been installed on the 2nd floor of the north and east façades. Construction has also reached the underside of the 7th floor, so this one’s also getting close to topping out. Like I said, stop and look around.

Keep in mind, Murphy Development Group is planning to open 318 North Carpenter  this summer, so time matters.

Stuff That’s Done: 210 North Carpenter

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210 North Carpenter is 12-story, 200,000-square-foot office building in the West Loop. Developed by Sterling Bay, it is a design by Solomon Cordwell Buenz. 210’s most important tenant is Leopardo Companies; they were the general contractor, and moved their Chicago offices here upon the building’s completion in March of 2019.

167 Green Street drops its 2nd tower crane

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The Banner waves as the West Tower Crane at 167 Green Street comes down.

With the removal of the second tower crane from 167 Green Street, Chicago now has no two-crane construction sites. There are a pair of three-crane jobs of course, at One Chicago Square and Cirrus/Cascade, but no pairs.

McDonald’s, Vista Tower, One Bennett Park, NEMA Chicago, Woodlawn Commons, and The Lincoln Common all recently utilized the double-tower-crane method to get stuff done. Now, 167 Green Street joins that list of completed missions.

Sunday, I took a quick walk around the West Loop site for one last look at the red Manitowoc MR608, affectionately known as West Crane, as crews worked on bringing it back to earth.

Stuff That’s Done (And Already Changing): The Mason

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The Mason is a 13-story, 263-unit apartment building in the West Loop that began its life known as 180 North Ada. The L-shaped structure was designed by Brininstool + Lynch for Marquette Companies, with Power Construction on the build. The Mason opened to residents in Spring 2019.

Last week, the Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved a zoning change for The Mason:

The Applicant is proposing to rezone the property from the current Planned Development #1384 to Planned Development #1384, as amended, to allow for a restaurant and tavern use to be established on the ground floor.

Helping move Restaurant Row further west in the West Loop is a good thing for hungry Chicagoans.

Stuff That’s Done: Twelve01West

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Twelve01West is a new office building at 1201 West Lake Street in the West Loop. It’s a favorite around here ever since developer McCaffery Interests lit up the tower crane back in the winter of 2018. Its ground floor also offers Chicago’s best spot to get your coffee fix and your bicycle fixed, Heritage Bikes & Coffee.

Twelve01West is a seven-story building designed by Antunovich Associates. It has 135,000 square feet of rentable office space, almost 12,000 square feet of retail space, counting the aforementioned Heritage location, and 45 parking spaces. It opened in March 2019.

W.E. O’Neil was the builder. Their link includes a cool shot of that purple tower crane.

 

Progress Update: 800 Fulton

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800 Fulton. It could be 300 North Halsted. Or 801 West Wayman. or 303 North Green. But none of those have the panache of 800 Fulton.

And 800 Fulton (that link includes an Oxblue webcam!) keeps sprouting up from this West Loop block, thanks to the efforts Lendlease and crew. Have a look:

An iPhone update at Union Station Tower

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Goettsch Partners rendering of Union Station Tower.

Caisson work is ongoing at Union Station Tower, and it’s still pretty darn tough to get a good look anywhere but along Clinton Street. Sometimes you have to be satisfied with sticking your phone up to the gaps in the fence and snapping away.

So here you go: A February iPhone Update at Union Station Tower, with a few real-camera shots thrown in for good measure.

 

Construction has begun at 1125 West Van Buren

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Dirt is being disrupted at 1125 West Van Buren. No glamour. Just heavy equipment doing the dirty work. But soon progress will be highly visible from the Eisenhower Expressway. It’s the start of what will be 20 stories and 200 apartments in a tower designed by Antunovich Associates for Tandem. For now, Keller NA has their distinctive blue & gold equipment on site, handling the caisson work.

A tower crane permit was issued February 6, followed by the building permit on the 11th. That means Tandem, acting once again as developer and CG, is good to go vertical. They hope to have 1125 open to residents next summer.

Peoria Green tears up a parking lot

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Tear. It. Up.

The Tetris-shaped parking lot that will soon become Peoria Green is no more. (Is Tetris-shaped a thing? I couldn’t come up with a better way to describe this site. It’s like a long rectangle that broke, and healed wrong. Or a long rectangle with seismic plates that shifted, rendering it askew yet still in one piece.) It’s a funky lot. But at least it isn’t pavement anymore.

Soon it will be a six-story, 25-condominium development from ZSD Corp. And according to the Peoria Green website, only three of those condos remain unspoken for. And now that ground has broken, we can look for some deeper digging soon.

Sullivan Goulette & Wilson is the design firm behind Peoria Green. General contractor duties will be handled by Maris Construction. They’ve teamed up previously in the West Loop on CA Washington.