Monday, May 23, 2016

Residential Tower Coming to Wabash and Roosevelt in Chicago’s South Loop

The Chicago Plan Commission has approved the construction of a new 26-story residential tower at 1136 South Wabash Avenue.  The property actually wraps around the Roosevelt Hotel building on this corner, and has both Wabash and Roosevelt Road frontage.  The Roosevelt Hotel is no longer a hotel, it is student housing, going by the name of Roosevelt Student Apartments.  This new building is also expected to be student housing.

Rendering of 1136 South Wabash

Rendering of 1136 South Wabash

It was designed by friends-of-the-blog, SCB, for prolific student houser, CA Ventures.  A 26-story tower will rise on the South Wabash Avenue side of the lot, while the one-story retail space on the Roosevelt Road side will remain as is.

There will be 320 residences and 151 parking spaces.  We’ve received some questions about why there are so many parking spaces being built in a building so close to a major transit junction (CTA Orange, Green and Red Line trains plus CTA bus routes 1, 3, 4, 12, 18, 29, 62, 146).   We’re not part of the development team, so we can only guess that it has to do with the fact that the revisions in the Transit Oriented Development ordinance came after the plans for this project were already finalized.

Revising a building generates a lot of logistical problems (financing people want to see construction by a certain date, equipment rental like cranes is complicated), plus tens of thousands of dollars in professional fees.  I don’t think we’ve seen a PD filed with the city in which the lawyers didn’t get at least $10,000 for the paperwork.  It simply may not have been worth the time, money, and effort to change this building so late in the game.

from Chicago Architecture http://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2016/05/23/residential-tower-coming-to-wabash-and-roosevelt-in-chicagos-south-loop/


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