One Grant Park’s best side.
Friday, when big news always happens, One Grant Park received its full-build permit from the City of Chicago, confirming that McHugh Construction can keep doing what they’re doing at 1200 South Indiana Avenue in the South Loop. And what they’re doing is shooting One Grant Park skyward at an impressive rate.
The Rafael Viñoly Architects design for Crescent Heights brings nearly 800 apartments across 76 stories, with 12 of those for parking.
The Big Blue Forms of One Grant Park.
Many legal-types will tell you to fill out your forms in blue. Which is exactly what McHugh Construction is doing at One Grant Park. Eschewing the usual yellow forms you see throughout Chicago, McHugh has opted for blue on Rafael Viñoly Architects’ 76-story apartment tower in the South Loop. And with Lake Michigan just a couple blocks away, why not? Working blue can be a bad thing for a comedian, but not for a construction company. Your children can watch. Blue screen of death? Nah, that’s for your old laptop. These are Blue Screens of Safety.
One Grant Park, a development from Crescent Heights, will stack 792 rental units atop 12 levels of parking. Work began on the lot at Roosevelt, Indiana, and Michigan back in December.
One Grant Park has begun making its push toward the sky in the South Loop.
One Grant Park has begun going vertical at the south end of Grant Park, and the corner of Roosevelt and Indiana will never be the same. The shiny 76-story, 792-unit apartment tower from Rafael Viñoly Architects is a busy site these days, and you know longer have to stand on tip-toes and peer over the fences to catch the action. In fact, you could pack a picnic and sit amongst those leg-statue thingies and watch McHugh Construction work whilst you dine in the park.
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.)
Can I hang out down there, if I promise to be reaaaalllly careful?
One Grant Park looks like a playground. It isn’t, of course. Unless you’re skilled laborers paid to work there, and then I bet it’s all-day fun.
For now, One Grant Park is still seeing most of its action below street level. There are tunnels and rings of rebar running throughout the site, like a corn maze on an Iowa farm, minus the tractor rides and hay bales. It’s cool enough to stand around and watch, that maybe McHugh Construction will put a gift shop at the exit. Some hot apple cider and a scale model of Rafael Viñoly Architects‘ tower would make nice Christmas gifts, no?
That’s most of the One Grant Park tower crane in the distance, but don’t worry. I’ll get you closer.
Accumulating tower crane parts hinted at a full-fledged assembly. And sure enough, One Grant Park added a tower crane to its arsenal over the weekend. One week after planting the stub in concrete, Central Contractors Service (that’s the ALL Crane folks; they know tower cranes) was back on South Loop soil, installing the shiny red Potain MD 485B (yep, I can still read a permit.)
Sections of tower crane are readied for assembly at One Grant Park.
The crane-building crane is on the scene.
The highs and lows of One Grant Park include below-grade core work, and preparations for building a tower crane. The tower crane base was planted Friday of last week, so the foundation has had time to set up properly. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll put it together over the weekend. There’s plenty of room to work within the site, so street closures don’t seem likely.
Meanwhile, grab a stepladder and go watch the work at the east side of One Grant Park. Workers are deep down working on the elevator core. And they’re using fire!
Working down low on the core. Do you see fire?
Scratch One Grant Park off the tower crane waiting list.
https://twitter.com/PDNAChicago/status/847801738648268800
Thanks to that tweet from Twitter user @PDNAChicago, we now know One Grant Park has begun installing a tower crane. The crane permit was granted (heh…Granted) way back on February 1, so it’s been a long wait.
The highly-anticipated Rafael Viñoly Architects design for Crescent Heights is delivering 76 stories and 792 apartments, plus 12,000 square feet of retail space, to the South Loop intersection of Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue.
Soon, McHugh Construction will have a new tower crane with which to begin sending One Grant Park into the sky. Hopefully, it won’t be a two-month wait like we had for the seedling. (Spoiler alert: It won’t be.)
Case Foundation breaks down a caisson rig Thursday at One Grant Park in the South Loop.
Down at One Grant Park in the South Loop, Case Foundation has disassembled most of its caisson equipment and hauled it away. And while I’m no math genius, I couldn’t count more than one caisson on site that still awaits its concrete filling.
Now B.U.C. crews will be monitoring the lot at Roosevelt and Michigan 24/7, watching for tower crane parts to arrive. The City of Chicago issued that permit on February 1st, so somewhere there’s a free-standing Potain MD 485B seething to get into the game. It’s March Madness time; I say BRING IT ON.
Caisson work continues in earnest at One Grant Park in the South Loop.
Caisson work is good, dirty fun. And proving that once again is One Grant Park. But don’t take my word for it; here are a bunch of photos from last week that are each worth at least 300-400 words apiece. Thanks, as always, to Case Foundation, for putting on a show.
Building Up Chicago 