B12 Solipsism

Mayor Daley’s budget is in deficit, municipal projects don’t get funded, schools don’t get funded, yet developers can get as much TIF money¹ as they need, no matter what. No consequences, no strings. Just plain ole corporate welfare.

A city panel approved another major increase in financial assistance for planned Loop apartment development that has struggled to get off the ground because of rising costs and the tough lending climate.

The Community Development Commission signed off Tuesday on a $34-million tax-increment financing subsidy to help pay for the conversion of a vintage Loop office tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into a 310-unit apartment building.

That’s more than four times the $8 million in TIF funds the city initially approved for the development back in 2006, when its total cost was estimated at $79 million.

But the projected cost had soared to $139 million in 2008, and the project’s developer, Village Green Cos., went back for more. The city complied by hiking the subsidy to $20 million.

[Click to continue reading Loop project poised to get another big TIF boost - Chicago Real Estate Daily]

Via Lynn Becker, who adds:

When, in 2006, a developer announced plans to rehab Vitzhum & Burns Steuben Club Building at 188 W. Randolph, an $8 million dollars contribution from the massive Central Loop TIF was going to kick in about 10% of the $79 million cost.

…

But wait – there’s more! The project is also getting $40 million dollars in tax-exempt bonds from the state, plus $37 million in tax credits. You, lucky taxpayer, kick in almost half of the project cost and the private developer gets the building. Socialism, Chicago style.

When Draconian cutbacks are effecting everything in Chicago from the CTA, to the schools, to 4th of July Fireworks, the city is diverting another $26 million in tax revenues to an economically unsustainable development.

[Click to continue reading ArchitectureChicago PLUS: Welfare Queen]

Really disgusting. The Vitzthum & Burns Steuben Club Building is not a cookie-cutter square box, but it isn’t in the upper echelon of Chicago architecture either.

from a CBS Chicago report (presumedly based on the press release from Village Green Companies)

The Community Development Commission approved a plan to redevelop the vacant and historic Randolph Tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into 310 apartments, retail and commercial space, according to a release from the CDC.

The action recommends the designation of Village Green Companies as the developer for the proposed $145 million renovation.

Plans call for the mixed-use building, formerly known as the Steuben Club Building, to be converted into 168 studios, 98 one-bedroom and 44 two-bedroom units, the release said. Sixty-two of the residential units will be made affordable to households at or below 50 percent of median area income.

Village Green bought the 45-story office building out of bankruptcy in 2005 and will convert the 80-year-old structure into apartments. Plans also include 9,500 square feet of ground floor restaurant and retail space. Village Green will occupy 11,400 square feet on the second floor as its Chicago regional office.

Amenities will include a fitness center, swimming pool and spa. A social club will be located on the 38th and 39th floors, offering 360-degree views of the skyline and Lake Michigan, the release said.

The Gothic-style building will have extensive work done to preserve its historic terra cotta façade and other ornamental details and a gut rehabilitation of the interior.

The CDC also approved a redevelopment plan for the proposed Randolph/Wells tax increment financing district. Creation of the district will support the renovation of Randolph Tower and help redevelop other underutilized and vacant buildings in the area.

[Click to continue reading
City OK's Rehab Of Loop Tower, Home For Teen Mothers On West Side - cbs2chicago.com
]

Hey, build for the future, right? Demand for new condos might be low now, but in twenty years…

Via EveryBlock’s hyperlocal news

1. tax increment financing [↩]

Michigan Central Station ought to be preserved, don’t you think? Maybe like some sort of urban decay museum. Clean it up a little bit, charge a small admission fee, allow photographers and tourists to explore it. I’d pay.

The last train pulled away more than 20 years ago from Michigan Central Station, one of thousands of “see-through” buildings here, empty shells from more auspicious times.
Multimedia

Many of the blighted buildings stay up simply because they are too expensive to tear down. Yet Michigan Central is in a class of its own. Some city officials consider it among the ugliest behemoths to pockmark Detroit and have ordered its demolition, but others see it as the industrial age’s most gracious relic, a Beaux Arts gem turned gothic from neglect but steeped in haunting beauty.

Now Detroit has become embroiled in an urgent debate over how to save what is perhaps its most iconic ruin — and in the process, some insist, give the demoralized city a much needed boost.

“People compare it to Roman ruins,” said Karen Nagher, the executive director of Preservation Wayne, an organization that seeks to protect architecture and neighborhoods around Detroit. “Some people just want it left alone. But I’d love to see that building with windows in and lights on again.”

[Click to continue reading Detroit Journal - Seeking a Future for a Symbol of a Grander Past - NYTimes.com]

I found over 800 photos of the Michigan Central Station on Flickr¹ but have not taken any myself, unfortunately.

“It’s the quintessential example of urban decay in Detroit,” said John Mohyi, a Wayne State University student and founder of the Michigan Central Station Preservation Society, a nonprofit group formed to save the building. “To see redevelopment of that station would have a major impact on morale.”

Having lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years, Detroit has a backlog of thousands of empty office buildings, theaters, houses and hotels. Downtown alone, more than 200 abandoned buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are examples of the Art Deco and neo-Classical styles that were popular before World War II, when Detroit was booming.

But with 500,000 square feet of space on 14 acres of land, Michigan Central Station is “different from your standard vacant building,” said Mickey Blashfield, a government relations official with the station’s owner, CenTra Inc., a trucking and transportation company that acquired it by default through a property transfer in 1995 and has struggled to find a use for it since.

“Architecturally and historically,” Mr. Blashfield said, “it has more of an emotional connection with people than virtually any building in the city.”

1. limited to Creative Commons licensed items only [↩]

Merchandise Mart Sonnet 2628, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

yet another shot of the Merchandise Mart at night

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a little noisier¹ than I would like, but…

1. ie, digital noise from low light [↩]

I’ve long admired the Reebie Storage Warehouse, even purchased some moving supplies from there back in the 1990s, even though I probably didn’t need to. I have taken dozens of photos of the place over the years, a few of which are Flickr-ized

I had a vague sense that the building was Egyptian Revival, but didn’t really glom onto the details until I discovered this blog post on the new BluePrint Chicago blog:

Egyptology was all the rage in the early 20th century, particularly after the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. One effect this had was seen in the popularization of Egyptian Revival architecture across the United States. However, not all of the buildings were equals in terms of being historically accurate. Some buildings fit into the category of Egyptian Revival, and some Academic Egyptian Revival. Egyptian Revival architecture was much more common, and though it had many Egyptian-like elements, it lacked a sensibility to Egypt’s history. Instead they were “picturesque” – which is lovely, but not necessarily accurate. Academic Egyptian Revival architecture was historically accurate. And The Reebie Storage Warehouse is one the country’s finest examples of Academic Egyptian Revival architecture.

The warehouse was based on two ancient Egyptian temples: Dendera and Edfu, both of which date back to the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (around 200 BCE). The columns on the Reebie building are replicas of columns at the Temple Horus at Edfu. The ornamentation on them is symbolic of the unity of Ancient Egypt through the depiction of the bundled lotus flower which represents Upper Egypt, and the water lily representing Lower Egypt. On either side of the building’s entrance is a statue of Ramses II, representing the two Reebie brothers: William and John. Beneath the two statues are William and John’s names written in the hieroglyphic equivalent of their phonetic spellings. Two other hieroglyphic inscriptions read “I have protection upon your furniture and all sealed things” and “I have guarded all your property every day warding off devouring flames, likewise robbery.” All of the ornamental drawings for the Reebie warehouse were reviewed for accuracy by both the Field Museum and Art Institute prior to their implementation.

[Click to continue reading Reebie Storage Warehouse « BLUEPRINT: Chicago]

[via The Chicago Reader]

Layers of Meaning, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Stairs at Chicago’s City Hall. Naturally monochromatic.

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from my 2006 photo archives

“Assassin’s Creed II” (UBI Soft)

Video games sure have progressed in sophistication since the days of Pitfall Harry on an Atari 2600

Melik Kaylan writes:

With the release of Assassin’s Creed II in November, a lot changed. Ostensibly the story of a time traveler who journeys back to the Renaissance, becoming a hooded Florentine protagonist tasked with avenging the murder of his parents, the game is set in Florence, Venice and Rome over a number of decades leading up to the year 1499. The game’s producer-authors chose those years as the most eventful of the era and labored lovingly to re-create the environs as exactly as possible. They hired Renaissance scholars to advise on period garb, architecture, urban planning, weaponry and the like. They took tens of thousands of photographs of interiors and streets. They used Google Earth liberally to piece together the ground-up and sky-down perspectives through which the action flows.

…

The game’s creative director, a Montrealer named Patrice Desilets, lived in Italy for some years, where he acquired a feel for the vivid intrigues of the Renaissance. He grew fascinated, he says, with the notion that “finally people can control time, and relive the past, through games.” The producer, Sebastien Puel, was born in the south of France, in the fortified medieval French town of Carcassonne, and grew up surrounded by history. The head writer, a Harvard graduate from Los Angeles and former screenwriter, Corey May, was driven, he says, by the challenge of “telling a story that feels real and is set among real people who existed.”

The game’s plot, boiled down to its bare essentials, serves up the standard, if glowingly visualized, perquisites of current pop-fiction narratives—regression through genetic memory, Dan Brown-ish secrets of the Templars, and a central fictitious protagonist, Ezio, who traverses venerable Italian cities with great physical agility hunting Renaissance bad guys. In Florence, for example, Ezio leaps and climbs, in a manner that calls to mind the urban gymnastics of Parkour, over and through such familiar monuments as the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio. That’s when he’s not crossing roofs or wading through streets inhabited by courtesans, brotherhoods of thieves and Florentine soldiers, all of whom come with little optional windows where you can learn about their customs. Even the faces of bystanders are based on portraits of the time.

[Click to continue reading Assassin's Creed II Brings Time Travel Closer to Reality | By Melik Kaylan - WSJ.com]

[non-WSJ subscribers click this link to read full article]

Sounds like a lot of fun, actually. I hope the game is wildly successful and generates many sequels…

A Little Blood in Our Eyes, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

the former Carson Pirie Scott building, now empty, though with big plans for the future.

(Embiggen)

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has anything moved in yet?

Merchandise Mart at Night, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

The Merchandise Mart and the Chicago River, reflecting their glories, future and past

from the mighty archives

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A few interesting links collected December 15th through December 16th:

• 

• Local Taste Dept.: On Top of Spaghetti : The New Yorker – Cincinnati-style chili has little in common with the Texas variety except for the ardor of its fans. The core concoction consists of ground beef in a thin, tomato-based sauce that is tangy rather than spicy. (Chocolate is rumored to be a secret ingredient.) In the basic presentation, the chili is poured over slightly overcooked spaghetti and topped with shredded Cheddar cheese; this is known as a “three-way.” Adding onions or red beans makes it a four-way; adding onions and red beans turns it into a five-way. There is no such thing as a six-way, although oyster crackers are the customary garnish. Chili and cheese on a hot dog is called a Coney.Sounds gross to me
• A Million Times – Louis Sullivan designed the facade of the building that was built by architect, William Presto (Presto!) in 1922. It was his last commission before his death and I just think it’s one of his prettiest. Clad in terra cotta (basically a baked clay) the excellent, intricate design frames the large retail window, bringing your eye to the goods being sold inside. Even though the building is smaller than the ones that surround it, the Krause store seems to stand taller and larger because of its awesome.

• 

• Superheroes Throughout History – This interesting collection of images by Indonesian artist Agan Harahap, titled “Super Hero”, features famous superheroes (and villains) inserted into iconic war photographs.

  Though it’s not “photography” per se, we found this set of images quite amusing.

The 2,000 foot planned condo tower, designed by Calatrava, has been stuck at hole-in-the-ground status for a while now. [Wikipedia has a few photos, including this one]. Wonder if this latest surge will help complete the project?

[artist's rendition of the Spire, via Wikipedia]

The stalled construction of North America’s tallest building, a 150-story luxury residential tower planned for downtown, may get a boost from unionized construction workers desperate for jobs.

Any effort to save the Chicago Spire faces major hurdles, especially coming after a real-estate glut that flooded Chicago with new condos. Plans call for the 2,000-foot-high Spire to have nearly 1,200 units — more than are expected to be completed for the entire downtown area in 2010. Prices start at $750,000, with the bulk of the condos costing $2 million to $15 million.

Workers broke ground with great fanfare in 2007, but the project stalled last year amid the financial crisis when funding dried up. That left many doubtful that the Santiago Calatrava-designed tower would ever emerge from the circular foundation that sits about a block from Lake Michigan.

Now a group of union pension funds is conducting due diligence on a plan to lend $170 million to Irish developer Shelbourne Development Group, said Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents 24 unions with some 100,000 members.[Click to continue reading Push to Finish Tallest Tower - WSJ.com]
[Non-WSJ subscribers use this Digg-enabled link]

The Chicago Spire website is a flash-centric p.o.s., but if flash annoys you less than it annoys me, browse the Chicago Spire website here for lots of photos, descriptions and the like.

and the failed Olympics bid continues to have a ripple effect on the Chicago economy:

The Spire got an unlikely break in early October with the demise of Chicago’s hopes to host the 2016 Olympics. Mr. Villanova, who was on Chicago’s Olympic bid committee, said the unions had committed to help fund the Olympic Village to house athletes. “When that went south on us, we started focusing on the Spire project,” he said.

After cranking out an average of 4,500 new condo units a year downtown for the past four years, Chicago developers expect to complete 900 units next year and fewer than 100 in 2012, said Gail Lissner, vice president of Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago appraisal and consulting firm. “We don’t see cranes in the sky anymore,” Ms. Lisser said, which could mean the Spire would arrive in a much-changed market in four or five years.

Not Afraid Anymore, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

accidental shot, modified in Photoshop

Looks Better On Black

Jackson and LaSalle

City Farm, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Division and Laramie, or nearby.

www.resourcecenterchicago.org/70thfarm.html

Schiff Residences building in the background with what look to be wind turbines for generating electricity

Dwell Magazine write-up about the building:
www.dwell.com/articles/all-aboard-concepts.html

Unitrin Building – Plus-X 125, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

1 East Wacker, Chicago, IL

View On Black

sliver of moon noticeable in larger view

Fisher Building, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Dearborn

View On Black

taken last year.

From Wikipedia:

The Fisher Building is 20-story, 275 foot tall neo-Gothic landmark building in the Chicago Loop community area of Chicago. Commissioned by paper magnate Lucius Fisher, the original building was completed in 1896 by D.H. Burnham & Company with an addition latter added in 1907.

It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 7, 1978. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1976.

Currently owned and managed by Village Green Management Company, the building houses apartments on floors 3-20 and commercial stores on the 1st and 2nd floors. At the time of its completion, the building was one of two buildings in Chicago that was 18 stories tall, the other being the Masonic Building. To this day, the Fisher Building is the oldest 18 story building in Chicago that has not been demolished. The Masonic Temple, while taller and older, was demolished in 1939

Though a project of D.H. Burnham & Company, the original structure was designed by Charles Atwood. In 1906, an addition on the northern side of the building raised it from 18 to 20 stories. A former employee of the Burnham firm, Peter J. Weber, designed and oversaw the building’s addition which was completed in 1907

A few interesting links collected November 4th through November 6th:

• The Unemployment Rate for People Like You – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com – “For white men ages 25 to 44 with a college degree”: 3.9% unemployment. Oh, well that makes a less compelling headline now, doesn’t it.
• Dorms for the dead | Crain’s Chicago Business – The dead may breathe new life into the Three Arts Club in the Gold Coast. Once a 110-room dormitory for women artists, the landmark building could become a permanent home to the cremated remains of as many as 15,000 people. That plan, put forth by a group of investors led by Chicago architect Bill Bickford, is a novel one for a property revered by preservationists
• Preserving the History of Haight-Ashbury – Photo Journal – WSJ – “Two groups are planning museums in the legendary neighborhood to capture memories of the 1960s hippie movement before they fade with age. If the museums launch, they would be the latest in a recent push by San Francisco groups to better document the city’s history”