Related Midwest will build two skyscrapers, one reaching 1,000 and the other 850 feet on the lakefront site where another developer once planned the nation’s tallest building.
Sources told the Chicago Tribune of the plans, which Related is set to formally reveal next week.
Together, the two towers would still be less than the planned 2,000-foot height of the Chicago Spire, which today remains a gaping hole in the ground on a 2.2-acre piece of prime real estate just west of Lake Shore Drive between the Chicago River and the Ogden Slip.
Related’s buildings would be a mix of condos, apartments and a hotel, and would be designed by David Childs, the architect of New York’s One World Trade Center, sources told the Tribune.
A spokeswoman for Related Midwest declined to comment on the project Friday, and renderings of the towers have not yet been made public.
As part of its deal with the city, Related also would help pay to build DuSable Park on a 3.3-acre peninsula on the other side of Lake Shore Drive from the site. The park has been planned since then-Mayor Harold Washington first proposed it in the 1980s.
Plans call for the 1,000-foot tower to be built on the southern edge of the site along the river and include condos and a 175-room hotel. The other building would go on the site’s northern edge and include apartments, sources told the Tribune.
The Riverwalk would be extended through the project site and to DuSable Park under the plans.
Altogether, the structures would total 1.3 million square feet, with up to 850 residential units.
The project would add to Related’s ambitious build-up in the city, including a mega development along the South Branch of the Chicago River that it’s calling “The 78.”
The site now features a giant hole dug as the beginnings of the foundation of the failed Spire tower, first unveiled by developer Christopher Carly in 2005. It featured a design by architect Santiago Calatrava, who just this week announced plans to design a sculpture farther west along the river.
Carly ran into financing problems, eventually turning the project over to Dublin-based developer Garrett Kelleher. Work on the site started in 2007 but stopped in late 2008 amid financial problems. Related Midwest took over the site in 2014, and Kelleher is still embroiled in legal battles over the project. [Chicago Tribune] — John O’Brien