Piles of Rubble Signal the Start of Old Saint Pat’s Tower

Excavators excavating at 625 West Adams Street (Courtesy of West Loop Spy Joel)

The building called 625 West Madison, but known around the West Loop at the Old Saint Pat’s Tower, should start to make itself known very soon.  West Loop Spy Joel sent in the photograph above showing excavators have already done a pretty thorough job turning the parking lot at the corner of Adams and Des Plaines into rubble.

Rendering of 625 West Adams

We’ve been reporting on 625 for the last four years, and summed it up pretty well last month:

625 West Adams was designed by friend-of-the-blog, Martin Wolf over at SCB.  It features 20 floors of offices above two floors of lobby, 400 parking spaces, 2,500 square feet of retail space, and church gathering space for up to 800 people.  That church space is important because the parking lot where the high rise will rise is owned by Old Saint Patrick’s Church across the street.  The church is selling the parking lot to the developers in exchange for parking, meeting, and office space in the new building.

Defying Chicago conventional wisdom, the developers, White Oak Realty and CA Ventures chose not to wait for an anchor tenant before beginning construction; choosing to build the tower on spec.  How very Asian, Middle Eastern, and European of them.

Neighbors in buildings like The Edge and the Haberdasher Lofts fought tooth-and-nail to stop this tower from being built.  Some believed that because the parking lot was owned by Old Saint Patrick’s Church that it could only be developed into another church.  Others believed that what would be built there couldn’t be taller than the OSP steeple.  Some believed there was even a law about this.

Their protests about losing their views were met with eyerolls and reminders that no view is protected in Chicago.  File it all under “lies my real estate agent told me.”  Like, “No, Washington and Kedzie isn’t East Garfield Park.  It’s totally the trendy West Loop!”

 

from Chicago Architecture http://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2016/06/08/piles-of-rubble-signal-the-start-of-old-saint-pats-tower/