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Magellan slashes 300 hotel rooms from Lakeshore East tower project
Chicago’s hospitality industry has been decimated by pandemic
With the pandemic having decimated the Chicago hotel industry, Magellan Development Group has slashed 301 hotel rooms from its planned mixed-use tower in Lakeshore East.
The developer will cut the room count to 269 from its approved 570 rooms at 193 North Columbus Drive, Crain’s reported. The number of apartments will also drop to 599 from 640, with 30 to be serviced units for short-term or long-term stays, Crain’s noted. The publication attributed the information to an email Alderman Brendan Reilly sent to constituents.
In October 2018 the Chicago Plan Commission signed off on Magellan’s 600-foot hotel and residential tower, which will rise on a 33,000-square-foot plot between the Blue Cross Blue Shield building and Magellan’s Aqua Tower. Reilly’s email said Magellan plans to start construction in the fall and finish in spring 2024. The plans for the new project look a few floors shorter than the approved 53 stories, but the precise number was unclear, according to the report.
The glass tower, designed by bKL Architecture, is to include 14,000 square feet of retail space in addition to a hotel bar-restaurant and a 4,400-square-foot ballroom. The residential component includes an array of units ranging from 413-square-foot studios to 1,100-square-foot three-bedrooms, according to plans at the time of the 2018 approval.
Magellan also has in the works a $1.1 billion project with Lendlease to build three towers on the eastern edge of the 28-acre neighborhood. Those towers would combine for 1,700 residential units and 30,000 square feet of retail space on a 171,000-square-foot property overlooking Lake Shore Drive. The project also received Chicago Plan Commission approval in fall 2018.
Designed by Chicago-based BKL Architecture, the building would include three floors of co-working space and 8,500 square feet of retail, according to Reilly’s email. Originally 53 stories, the tower appears slightly shorter in revised renderings, but Reilly did not provide specifics on height. The new design employs a sawtooth pattern on the building’s façade, a feature that didn’t exist before.
In late November, Magellan announced that its 101-story Vista Tower will be known as The St. Regis Chicago, after the developer partnered with the luxury hotel brand. Magellan had months earlier bought out Dalian Wanda Group’s 90 percent stake in the hotel and condo tower project. [Crain’s] — Alexi Friedman